Because she has seizures every day and slams into the ground, 18-year-old Dixie Pace has worn a helmet since November.

Pace uses cannabidiol oil, an oil derived from marijuana that was legalized in South Carolina last year for certain forms of epilepsy, to reduce her seizures from 50 down to an average of less than 10 a day.

“That’s just one oil,” Pace’s mother, April Pace, said Wednesday during a State House rally, urging the Legislature to legalize medical marijuana. April Pace says access to a different oil extracted from marijuana, or the plant itself, could control further — or possibly stop — Dixie Pace’s seizures.

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The marijuana legalization debate is most often expressed as a social or moral issue.

But the forum, "Marijuana Legalization: Will Your Business Be Impaired?" at the Greater Cleveland Partnership forum Thursday framed the debate as a workplace and workforce issue. The organization hasn't taken a position on legalization, but held the event to expose the local business community to all sides of the issues, said Joseph Roman, the GCP's president and chief executive officer.

LEGAL highs have been branded accessible and dangerous by an MP after five teenagers were taken to hospital.

Synthetic cannabis, known as Spice, which was taken by the five Lancaster University students. SUBMITTED

Barrow-born Lancaster MP Cat Smith yesterday spoke of her concern about five students who were hospitalised after taking former legal high Spice.

The 29-year-old former Lancaster University student has pledged to push for government legislation to protect the public from the dangerous.

She said: “It’s not just students who take legal highs. People are changing the chemical make-up to make them legal and replicate illegal drugs. Manufactured highs will get round the law all the time.

While researching into how cannabis interacts with other drugs in the brain, scientists inadvertently discovered why coffee and getting high go so well together. Caffeine reinforces the effects with THC, potentially making it more pleasurable.

Marijuana business news website GreenRushReview.com identifies nine cannabis specific factors that startups need to take into consideration.

It can be difficult to start a business of any nature. Venturing into the legal marijuana industry, however, will most certainly lead to numerous challenges not encountered by traditional businesses. Green Rush Review, a marijuana business news website, identifies nine cannabis-specific factors that startups need to take into consideration.

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Doug Coleman, Special Agent in Charge in Phoenix for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has spent much of his career tracking illegal drugs, like marijuana, to their roots.

“Our goal is to go after the biggest and baddest drug traffickers, so we actually target the people who are calling the shots,” he told ABC15. The people who are calling the shots, he said, are often the major drug cartels in Mexico.

“Methamphetamine, heroine and marijuana,” he said, “the Mexican cartels control all those; they manufacturer all those.”

In a surprising Wednesday morning editorial, Costa Rica’s normally conservative Spanish-language daily La Nación advocates for the legalization of medical marijuana.

The editorial, titled “Cannabis as Treatment,” notes that a large number of Costa Ricans – perhaps hundreds or thousands, it claims – use marijuana to treat a  range of health issues in this Central American country of 4.8 million, and that number is growing.

La Nación writes:

NEW ORLEANS -- As the Louisiana Legislature considers relaxing jail time for marijuana possession, and other states legalize it entirely, a new form of the drug has recently surfaced on the streets of New Orleans.

Twice in the past six months, New Orleans police have encountered what is known on the street as "wax," a marijuana derivative so potent that some experts have warned about negative effects ranging from hallucinations to drug-induced psychosis.

The most recent case in New Orleans came on May 11 after a traffic stop in the French Quarter led to a seizure of marijuana, a bong and a strange resin-like substance wrapped in brown paper. One NOPD officer quickly recognized the sticky material as a new marijuana derivative known on the street as "wax."

Opponents and supporters packed the State House Tuesday as the Criminal Justice Committee heard two bills that would legalize recreational marijuana.

Those who favor it say it's inevitable. Opponents argue it is too soon to move forward with the plan.

"Marijuana prohibition hasn't worked. It is there. It is everywhere. The question is can we bring it under the umbrella of government regulation." said Representative Mark Dion (D).

Dion and Rep. Diane Russell each presented a bill that commercialize marijuana. They said legalizing marijuana would not only provide a boost to the economy, but help regulate the drug to keep children safe.

Oils and extracts, vaporizers, grow lights and joint rollers filled a marijuana convention in Chicago on Wednesday — without a puff of pot in the air or a single leaf of the drug yet sold legally in Illinois.

More than 2,000 people attended the Marijuana Business Conference & Expo, hoping to cash in on a business that is forecast by one industry-backed market research group to grow to $11 billion in annual sales nationwide by 2019,.