While not everyone has warmed to the idea of treating medical conditions with marijuana, research continues to emerge supporting its benefits. This applies the most, perhaps, to children with severe conditions, who may benefit just as much as adults from medical marijuana treatment — even as concerns about its effects on their developing minds and bodies arise. But a new study shows how marijuana might still be used to treat children (and adults) with untreatable epilepsy, safely and without the drug’s typical effects.

High Times magazine’s New York-rooted editor-in-chief Dan Skye has spent plenty of time in Colorado researching and photographing the state’s medical and recreational systems, but his current, pre-Cannabis Cup trip to the state has been uncommonly eye-opening.

“The Colorado cannabis industry is an economic miracle,” Skye said Monday from a stop in Pueblo, where he’s meeting cannabis business owners and reporting on the state’s first-of-its-kind legalization. “Everyone in the United States is following Colorado’s lead.”

Health care leaders and entrepreneurs are competing for five licenses to grow and sell medical marijuana in New York as patients seek improved access to the drug

A $10 million construction project tied to selling medical marijuana to Lower Hudson Valley patients is unfolding about 60 miles northwest of White Plains.

Valley Agriceuticals, a company started by a team of health care and cannabis industry leaders, wants to build a marijuana grow facility in Wallkill, a farming community of about 29,000 people in Orange County.

The popular explanation for medical marijuana dispensaries that have popped up in states from Washington to New York is that marijuana is a wonder drug — treating not just nausea and lack of appetite, but also pain, anxiety, epileptic seizures, and the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia.

The federal government refuses to allow people to use it, proponents say. 

The story, however, isn’t quite so simple.

ALBANY COUNTY— There is a new form of pot on the block prompting a warning from police.
 
In the last few months authorities have made a handful of arrests-- including two arrests in Albany County just in the past two weeks-- connected to what is called marijuana wax.
 
Marijuana wax is a highly-potent form of the drug. Police say it is basically weed on steroids.
 
“It’s nasty stuff and it's messing people up," Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said. “It’s like 90 percent THC. 90 percent pure."
 
Depending on how it is cooked it can look like rock candy or peanut brittle. Police say it is often hidden in lip balm containers.
 

WATERTOWN — Some veterans and advocates say New York’s newly approved medical marijuana rules have left a gap by not allowing medical professionals to provide treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

The newly finalized state regulations allow medical marijuana in non-smokable forms to treat “debilitating or life-threatening conditions” such as cancer, HIV/AIDS and Parkinson’s disease, but not PTSD, experienced by many in the military.

Robert P. Loughhead, veterans outreach coordinator at the Vets Peer to Peer Outreach Center on State Street, said he’s heard more feedback from north country veterans in favor of opening access.

“They don’t like the other medications they get from the VA,” he said. “People don’t want to lose all of their emotions.”

Rush of growers expected, but only 5 will be approved

Gary Smith grows millions of pounds of tomatoes in a greenhouse in Niagara County, but he is fighting the clock to rotate in a different crop soon so that he can harvest in time for sale next January. His new crop: marijuana.

Or, at least, he hopes it will be.

Smith is among hundreds of people poring over regulations the state Department of Health released last week that paves the way for medical marijuana to be sold in New York State by early next year.

The complex set of rules sets in motion an application period that is expected to see a rush of businesses trying to get a foothold in the state’s medical marijuana industry.

Syracuse, N.Y. -- The state has refused to loosen up its stringent medical marijuana rules that prohibit the drug from being smoked and only allow it to be used to treat 10 medical conditions.

The state Health Department has issued final regulations after receiving hundreds of comments from the public. The state expects to get its medical marijuana program off the ground next year.

"Expanding the initial set of regulations would have subjected the State to unnecessary scrutiny and jeopardized the program's ability to move forward in any meaningful manner," the health department said.

Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, a Democratic sponsor of the medical marijuana legislation, criticized "senseless burdensome restrictions" on the program.

ALBANY — When New York State’s lawmakers were mulling legalizing the medical use of marijuana last summer, some proponents feared that the proposed law was so restrictive that it would prevent many patients from receiving the drug.

Now, with the state’s Health Department close to issuing final regulations about the new program, the law’s supporters say their fears may soon be realized.

Jacqueline Lasdon is a pharmaceutical heiress and self-proclaimed “opera singer gone rogue” who received a $2.5 million trust fund disbursement from her late grandfather, a pharmaceutical magnate. After the she received the money, she purchased a home at the upscale Onyx Condominium. However, it seems her fellow tenants are not too keen on Lasdon living in the building and are filing a lawsuit that includes abuses such as “offensive” levels of marijuana smoke coming from her unit and various “transients” entering the building to visit.