As a registered nurse working in trauma and rehabilitation centers in Kansas, Jennifer Shepherd cared for patients who weren't benefiting from the pain medications prescribed to them.

She noticed a pattern that prompted her to detour from her 13-year career in the traditional medical field. No matter what type of pain or medical problem the patients were experiencing, they tended to be prescribed the same opiates or steroid pain relievers. Yet some didn’t want to take their medication due to side effects associated with them, and others weren’t getting enough pain relief, she said.

“I couldn’t figure out why I had 20 patients with the same pills,” she said. “At that point, I started noticing that Western medicine wasn’t helping as many patients as I thought it should.”

Gov. Robert Bentley has signed into law a bill to allow people with debilitating medical conditions to use cannabidiol, which is made from the same plant as marijuana.

The bill, known as Leni's Law, expands on a bill passed two years ago, known as Carly's Law, that authorized a UAB study on using cannabidiol to treat people with severe seizure disorders.

"As a physician, I believe it is extremely important to give patients with a chronic or debilitating disease the option to consider every possible option for treatment," Bentley said in a statement.

"With Leni's Law, citizens in Alabama will have access to cannabidiol that may help with treatment. 

 California voters will decide again this November whether to decriminalize the recreational use of marijuana by adults, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday, calling the looming vote a "pivotal moment" in the national debate around pot legalization and the 45-year-old war on drugs.

Newsom and other leaders of a coalition behind the Adult Use of Marijuana Act announced they have collected enough signatures to place on the Nov. 8 ballot a measure that would make it legal for adults 21 and older to possess, sell or transport up to an ounce of pot. California voters rejected a similar measure in 2010.

Although a wide variety of extracts, concentrates and edibles are sold at medical dispensaries such as Little Amsterdam in Southwest Portland, edibles are not yet available for purchase to recreational customers in Oregon. That changes on June 2.

Oregonians interested in purchasing marijuana edibles have to wait less than a month until they can get their fix. The Oregon Health Authority issued rules Wednesday for the sale of marijuana edibles under the state’s early recreational marijuana sales program.

Those were the words of 43-year old Timothy Dillon, as he lay bleeding on the ground after being shot by police, following a five-hour long standoff where he threatened to shoot the officers, goading them to kill him “Let’s get this over with.” Instead of getting it over with and killing him, as Dillon had hoped in an attempted ‘suicide by cop,’ deputies administered first aid and saved his life, allowing him to “still hold [his] wife, hug [his] da

The country’s largest medical marijuana dispensary, with more than 100,000 cannabis patients, avoided a four-year long shutdown effort by the federal government on Tuesday.

Harborside Health Center in Oakland has faced closure since 2012, when the federal government attempted to shut down the marijuana dispensary and seize the buildings that house the business, councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan told the SFGate.

Last year, it did $103.4 billion in net sales.

With more than 8,000 stores in all 50 states, it's actually the largest drug retail chain in the nation. And last week it did something that even I didn't see coming.

On one of its social networking blogs, Walgreens (NASDAQ: WBA) made a bold move...

It came out in support of medical marijuana.

Well, kind of.

In a blog that was posted on Walgreens' Tumblr account, entitled “Clarifying Clinical Cannabis,” you can find this:

A Lewiston business owners wants to open a cannabis club for medical marijuana patients, but city officials say it's not legal.

Shanon Gogan said her cannabis club is not a nightclub, but a small room with a table and eight chairs.

"We are going to check their medical card before they come back here to make sure they are legal and legit to use their medicine," Gogan said.

Gogan and her husband, Vincent Gogan, are medical marijuana patients. Vincent Gogan is a licensed caregiver.

The couple owns Legal Peaces smoke shop on Lisbon Street.

The Global Marijuana March returns to North Texas this Saturday in Hyde Park in downtown Ft. Worth and libertarians will be in the thick of it once again as usual. Last year an estimated 2,000 cannabis freedom supporters flooded the streets and organizers hope to top that with 3,000 participants this year.

Last week, this column was pretty pessimistic. Apologies, but when a state in my own beloved Northeast decides to put the kibosh on a law that would reduce the number of prisoners in their jails in and increase the amount of tax dollars in its coffers, it grates at the nerves. New Hampshire did it, and Vermont did too, but to the East, Maine has given New England a new hope for legalization.