Often, cannabis is associated with its recreational activity and its many adherents. In the past year, PhytoChemia has made a full review of literature on the properties of boreal resources for Agroboréal. This scientific review is available on the site web of this company in french version only (http://agroboreal.com/revue-litterature-les-proprietes-ressources-boreales). For this post, I took the full card description of Cannabis sativa (L.) and translated it in english to put it in our blog. This information card lists the biological activities, commercial and medicinal potential and other scientific knowledge on the plant.

We just don’t know enough about it.

That from the organization representing 12,000 doctors in this province when it comes to prescribing medical marijuana.

Doctors of BC President, Dr. Bill Cavers, says while he welcomes tighter restrictions, doctors shouldn’t have been forced to become the gate-keepers of the drug in the first place.

“I think the policy should have been in place first, and I think that Health Canada, unilaterally and without consultation, brought in some rules which we are now wearing.”

He says evidence-based research is lacking.

It's not easy living above a clash of ideologies.

But that's where residents of Maxine Clough's Vancouver condo building find themselves: stuck between Ottawa's virulent opposition to marijuana and cannabis activists bent on legalization.

Meanwhile, the very real pot dispensary on their ground floor is open for business.

"We're in the middle," says Clough, who supports calls to regulate Vancouver's rapidly multiplying dispensaries.

"We're stuck here, and the city seems to be trying to do something. And we've got the feds saying: 'Don't you dare!'"

'Marijuana is not a medicine'

Nearly two-thirds of the money the federal government spent on medical marijuana last year went to veterans in Atlantic Canada — a region with comparatively few veterans.

According to Veterans Affairs Canada, the federal department spent $5.2 million on medical marijuana for veterans in the last fiscal year. Of that, almost $3.4 million — or 65 per cent — went to veterans in Atlantic Canada.

Meanwhile, the number of veterans living in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and P.E.I. accounts for less than 14 per cent of the total number in Canada.

Fabian Henry, a former Canadian Forces member, takes responsibility for helping to introduce medical marijuana to East Coast veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Lower Mainland municipalities want the support of other Canadian jurisdictions as they push for a national debate on the regulation of marijuana dispensaries.

The B.C. communities are submitting a resolution for discussion at next month’s Federation of Canadian Municipalities convention. The document, a copy of which was obtained by The Globe and Mail, says local governments have the authority to regulate marijuana dispensaries.

Medical marijuana users in Quebec can now help shed light on the drug's long-term safety and effectiveness through a new registry at McGill University in Montreal. 

McGill says its medical marijuana registry, which launched on Monday, is the first research database of its kind in the world. 

The registry meets a requirement of Quebec's college of physicians, which considers cannabis an experimental therapy. Under provincial regulation, cannabis can only be prescribed as part of a formal study.

Health Canada estimates over 40,000 Canadians legally consume cannabis to relieve symptoms from diseases including multiple sclerosis, HIV, cancer or epilepsy.

Curled on the floor retching, Tzvetanka Chiderova yelled for her mother to get the water pipe. Within minutes, the Montreal web-designer stopped gagging. The waves of nausea disappeared, she said.

“It was instantaneous,” said Chiderova, who turned to marijuana for medicinal purposes as a last resort while being treated for stomach cancer. Without it, she says, she could not have continued with life-saving chemotherapy.

The RCMP’s raid of a local marijuana dispensary sparked a sizable protest outside City Hall on Monday.

Dana Larsen, one of B.C.’s top marijuana legalization advocates, was among 40 people objecting to the Jan. 15 raid on the Kaya dispensary on Lawrence Avenue.

In what’s being hailed as a world first, two groups, including the McGill University Health Centre, have launched a registry of medical cannabis users.

The new research database is aimed at collecting information on how cannabis is used and monitoring patient safety.

“Hopefully the database itself will provide enough meat for other researchers in Quebec and elsewhere to be able to ask questions of their own about effects on certain symptoms and side effect profiles,” said principal researcher Dr. Mark Ware, director of clinical research at the MUHC and associate professor at McGill University.

The idea is for researchers to be able to paint a better picture of who is using cannabis, why, and how much they are using, Ware said.

THORNHILL, Ont. - Gwenevere Repetski turns three next month and she is finally able to crawl, a milestone her parents thought they would never see.

She was just an infant when she was diagnosed with epilepsy, a debilitating neurological disorder that has left her developmentally delayed.

"She was kind of like a bag of Jell-O," says her mother, Reagan Repetski.

When she was two years old, she could hardly roll over when she was placed on her back, adds her father, Alex.

Sitting in the living room of their Thornhill, Ont., home, the Repetskis recall their stressful and emotional journey in search of a treatment for Gwen.