At the Republican National Convention this week, Donald J. Trump will be officially crowned the party’s presidential candidate. With the possibility of a Trump presidency becoming very, very real, cannabis advocates are naturally curious about just what that would mean for legalization efforts.

According to the latest numbers from the Marijuana Business Daily, one condition is responsible for a staggering 64.2 percent of medical marijuana prescriptions in the U.S.: chronic and severe pain.

The National Institute of Health defines chronic pain as "any pain lasting more than 12 weeks [and which] may arise from an initial injury, such as a back sprain, or there may be an ongoing cause, such as illness."

Got room for a bar fridge in your apartment or basement getaway? Then you might have room to grow cannabis (provided, of course, it's legal where you live.)

Leaf, billed as the world's first "plug 'n' plant" secure grow chamber, is sufficiently compact to fit beside a desk or in the back of a closet. Once the seeds are planted, Leaf does most of the work, continuously monitoring and adjusting the pH level, water/air temperatures, and nutrients, to optimize the plant's size, weight, and potency. The roof of the chamber is equipped with LED grow lights as you can see in the mockup from Leaf's Instagram. 

State Board of Medicine says doctors recommended large plant counts.

In the largest disciplinary action taken against medical marijuana doctors to date in Colorado, the state Medical Board on Tuesday suspended the licenses of four doctors for allegedly recommending excessive plant counts to more than 1,500 patients.

All of the recommendations involved approvals for patients to grow or possess at least 75 plants. The standard plant count for medical marijuana patients is six plants, and state health officials have long threatened to crack down on doctors who they believe recommend higher amounts without sufficient justification.

Maybe it caught your attention along I-75 south in Byron: a billboard advertising the sale of cannabis, also known as marijuana.

John Cater from Macon saw the YourCannabisOMS.com billboard. It’s an online marijuana dispensary.  

“Edible Cannabis is legal in Georgia, that’s what the billboard says, so it must be true,” Cater said.

State Representative Allen Peake of Macon, who crafted Georgia's medical marijuana law, says that's not the case.

“I don’t know how they're saying that. I wrote the law, I know the law, and medical cannabis oil is the only form that you can legally possess in Georgia,” Peake said.

He says to legally possess it, you have to have one of eight medical conditions and register with the state.

MERRY JANE presents "Trailblazing Cannabis" highlighting women thriving in the legal marijuana industry.

To foster growth and inclusion in the cannabis industry, MERRY JANE teamed up with Wonder Women Tech to present a panel featuring five women pioneering careers in the legal cannabis space.

The conversation, moderated by MERRY JANE's News Editor Sasha Horne, was held as part of the Wonder Women Tech Conference.

(Photo: Terrell Young/MERRY JANE)

Reports that a chemical insecticide was found in legal, organically grown marijuana in Oregon have led to a class action lawsuit — not against growers, but against the insecticide maker.

Guardian mite spray, advertised as an "all natural" product, contains ivermectin — a conventional pesticide in the avermectin family, Benjamin Efran claims in a July 14 lawsuit in Multnomah County Court.

He sued All In Enterprises, and its officers Michael Delamater, both of Illinois, and Thomas McCathron, of Michigan.

According to the lawsuit, the company listed the ingredients as "cinnamon oil, lemon grass oil, citric acid, yeast extract, sunflower lecithin, and water." Guardian was primarily used to kill mites.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is a nonprofit focused on drug policy reform, drug regulation, and the destigmatization of addiction. 

As marijuana slowly becomes legal across the United States, there are still many that are opposed to it, especially in law enforcement. Yet there is one organization, LEAP (which stands for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) that’s trying to de-stigmatize addiction and pull back the draconian laws that still exist against marijuana.

Congress is patting itself on the back after passing the Comprehensive Addiction & Recovery Act (CARA) and sending it to Obama’s desk. The “overwhelmingly bipartisan” bill is meant to address the opioid epidemic currently gripping the U.S.

It was an easy one for congressmen to brag about to their constituency, but the legislation is notable for its failure perhaps more so than its achievement. Namely, the failure to recognize medical cannabis as part of a viable alternative for treating chronic pain, and failure to call out the role of Big Pharma in getting the nation hooked on opioids.

With the marijuana industry booming right now, we are seeing more states legalize it as the benefits of legal marijuana become more increasingly obvious to society as a whole. Legalizing helps keep marijuana out of the hands of underage people much like how it is done with alcohol and states are seeing significant tax revenue from legalizing the crop.