That, combined with the stories from people suffering from constant pain, ultimately outweighed the medical community’s concerns that there’s not enough evidence to use medical marijuana to treat pain.

Minnesota legislators in 2014 approved using products of the marijuana plant for nine specific health issues, but left the decision about whether intractable pain – severe pain that otherwise can not be treated – up to the health commissioner.

COLUMBIA — When Sheila Dundon began chemotherapy treatments to combat breast cancer in 2007, she experienced all the side effects she'd seen in patients as a registered nurse. She felt the shooting pains, the pale-in-the-face nausea, the unwillingness to get out of bed each morning.

One symptom she didn't expect was fuzzy-headedness, the sense that her brain was trapped in an egg beater. Her psychiatrist pointed out that all those anti-depressants she was taking might have led to a mental condition called serotonin syndrome.

Off the record, he told her that marijuana could help. Asked how she got it in a state where it’s still criminalized, Dundon called it a “gift from God.”

CHICAGO– Almost two years after Illinois chose medical cannabis users should not be forbidden from having guns, a number of clients received letters from state police informing them their firearms cards were being revoked.

Although the company firmly insists the letters were sent out to just four people prior to the error was fixed, some cannabis fans state the mistake symbolizes an underlying ambivalence about medical marijuana in the 23 states where it’s now legal.

For example, a checklist for firearm owners on the Illinois State Police website includes this demand: “I am not a medical marijuana client registry card holder.” That, too, was an error that a supplier is now working to get rid of from the site, ISP representative Matt Boerwinkle said.

The document hasn't been published officially but a copy was obtained by the Associated Press last week, the Washington Post reported. The new decree also permits the sale of medicines derived from cannabis at pharmacies.

Paul Stanford first tried cannabis when he was just 11-years-old. The year was 1971 and he was in his babysitter’s basement in Dallas, Texas. The offending “pusher” was the babysitter’s son, a 26-year-old who had just returned home from serving in the Vietnam War. Stanford didn’t start using cannabis regularly until he was 13 and able to scrape together $110 to buy his first pound. His intent at the time was to make a little extra money while stocking his own stash. He lost money on that first buy but a budding infatuation for the cannabis plant was sparked inside him. At 17 he moved to North Carolina and began selling cannabis and turning a profit.

MONTREAL — For police forces across Canada, the month of August is harvest time.

Officers slip on their coveralls, grab thick gardening gloves, shoulder machetes and begin the annual ritual of chopping down marijuana plants hidden in cornfields, remote mountain valleys and forest clearings.

If growers are unlucky enough to be caught red-handed, they are cuffed and taken to court. Each police unit hits two or three of these hidden marijuana plantations, with the confiscated pot taken to incinerators. The destruction of marijuana plants goes on for about two weeks, and then it’s back to normal police work.

Has this war on marijuana worked?

Police are testing for cocaine, cannabis and alcohol in roadside tests – and recounting the sad story of teenager who lost his life – as part of the annual festive crackdown on drink and drug driving.

The blitz on drivers will carry one throughout December, and, as the party season approaches, they are emphasising particularly to younger drivers, that they could well be still over the limit in the morning because drink and drugs stay in the body for many hours.

Haiti - Security : 45 kg of marijuana from Haiti, seized in DR
06/12/2015 09:09:08 The National Drug Control Directorate (DNCD) of the Dominican Republic during several operations in the south of the country, arrested two women and four men and seized 100 lbs (45.35 kg) of marijuana from Haiti, for the micro-traffic in different districts of Greater Santo Domingo.

The arrests and seizures were made primarily in road checkpoints and in house by agents of the DNCD in coordination with members of the Intelligence Directorate (G-2) of the Dominican Army, in the presence of Deputy Prosecutors.

Some have characterized the loss of the marijuana legalization initiative in Ohio as an indicator of lack of support for the issue. However, what the defeat of the initiative reveals is the intent of citizens not just to make “pot” legal, but to do it right. In fact, the lack of support for the initiative indicated an unwillingness to carry forward an exploitive model from prohibition into the legal market.

Ten investment groups were behind the Ohio initiative and were its beneficiaries. The title of the initiative called the business model a “monopoly.” We can’t know how a different model might have fared, but it has been widely reported that large numbers of those in Ohio who support legalization couldn’t support the “monopoly” created by this initiative.