Cannabis has been used medicinally for a very long time. People have employed this resinous flower to treat symptoms from minor physical discomfort to epilepsy and arthritis, and now, sickle cell anemia.

What Is Sickle Cell Anemia?

Sickle cell anemia is a blood disease. Healthy blood cells are shaped like donuts without a hole. These disc-shaped organisms are small, but contain our genetic code and, more importantly, our oxygen. Oxygen, as I’m sure you know, is what we breathe, and most times when our oxygen supply is put in jeopardy, so are our lives.

Pot is a big business and only destined to get bigger. Legal sales last year reached $5.7 billion, up more than a billion dollars over the previous year. Sales this year are expected to top $7.1 billion.

This fall, we're likely to see marijuana legalization initiatives win in a handful of states—Arizona, California, Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts—which would more than triple the size of the legal marijuana market in the county. The combined population of the legal states so far is about 16 million; the population of California alone is more than 38 million. If all five initiative states vote for marijuana this year, the size of the legal market would grow to more than 55 million.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) is Congress's most vocal opponent of legal marijuana, having single-handedly spearheaded a provision blocking legal pot shops in the District of Columbia in 2014. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), on the other hand, was recently named Congress's "top legal pot advocate" by Rolling Stone.

The DEA will officially reclassify cannabis as a prescription-only, Schedule II drug on Aug. 1, 2016, a report published on the weekend claims. If true, that means medical marijuana could be legal by prescription — and perhaps only by prescription — in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the US territories. Note: Reporters at The Daily Chronic question the accuracy of this report.

Former Chicago Bears quarterback Jim McMahon is suffering through Early Onset Dementia. It’s a disease usually reserved for the elderly. One that impacts your memory, thought process and cognitive abilities.

McMahon, who played 15 seasons in the NFL, is just 56 years old.

The former Super Bowl winning quarterback joined multiple ex-NFL players at the Cannabis World Congress and Business Expo this past week to advocate for the use of medical marijuana in the league.

Cliff Thomason left the real estate business last year to become something of a pioneer: a hemp farmer.

The Grants Pass, Oregon, man was the first in the state to legally grow hemp, after Oregon began licensing growers in 2014, joining 17 other states nationwide that have differentiated hemp from marijuana and set up separate regulatory systems for growing it. But Thomason is one of only 43 farmers in the state targeting their efforts at producing seed and fiber, as opposed to the cannabidiol oil extracted from hemp stalk and used both as a balancer of the psychoactive properties of marijuana and a purely medicinal product, easing symptoms from back pain to anxiety. In the booming cannabis industry, hemp has become a neglected stepchild.

As we continue to legalize marijuana, state by state we see widely differing schemes of taxing the herb. From a low of Massachusetts’ proposed 3.75 percent state tax to Washington State’s 37 percent state tax, every state has come up with something different.

Besides the obvious answer, “Because they can,” it’s interesting to consider how we apply taxes to other agricultural goods. No matter how you look at it, marijuana consumers are bearing an unfair burden of taxation.

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted on Thursday to allow banks to provide financial services to legal recreational and medical marijuana dispensaries, according to The Denver Post.

Marijuana is still listed as a Schedule 1 substance by the federal government, so marijuana businesses in states where recreational use is legal, like Colorado, are forced to operate on an all-cash basis.