The clock could be running out this year for activists urging the Iowa Legislature to approve expanded access to medical marijuana.

Iowa Senate Majority Leader Michael Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, told reporters Tuesday he is keeping the door open for medical cannabis legislation, but his goal is to have the Senate adjourn its 2016 session this week. He spoke one day after the Iowa House defeated a Republican-backed bill aimed at helping Iowans with debilitating diseases access cannabis oil in Minnesota and other states and bring it back to Iowa.

Marijuana's official designation as a Schedule 1 drug — something with "no accepted medical use" — means it is pretty tough to study.

Yet numerous anecdotal reports as well as some studies have linked marijuana with several purported health benefits, from pain relief to helping with certain forms of epilepsy.

Still, experts say more rigorous scientific analyses are needed. Use of marijuana, a psychoactive drug, can come with risks, especially in people who may be prone to addiction or mental illness. Take a look at how marijuana can affect your brain and body: 

A Vancouver pot shop entrepreneur says he’s in a real dilemma, as one of his locations is in the final stages of approval, while the other is facing closure.

Chuck Varabioff, owner of the BC Pain Society, says his Commercial Drive location was rejected because it’s within 300m of a school, but he’s vowing to stay open come Friday.

“If the city wants to come in, they want to come with a fine, I will be standing at the door with a post-dated cheque to pay my fines for an entire month if that’s what they want.”

“I’m not happy to pay the fines but I will pay the fines while I’m fighting and appealing for your right as well as my right as well as 15,000 other people’s rights who are members.”

An attempt in the Iowa Legislature to expand medical marijuana access in the state may have reached its end this session with a failed vote in the Republican-controlled House, though some Democrats said Tuesday they would keep pushing the issue in the days before a possible adjournment.

Both Republicans and Democrats in the chamber pointed fingers at each other following a Monday night debate that ultimately shot down a plan that critics said would not have done enough to expand the state’s medical marijuana law, which allows the use of cannabis oil for certain epilepsy patients.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a firm stance on marijuana legalization yet — she wants to see more research first. But there are some challenges to getting that research, she said.

At an ABC town hall April 21, Clinton told audience member Evan Nison, a National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws board member, what she would do as president to address the marijuana legalization debate.

Women are becoming more aggressive in fighting for medical marijuana legalization. Women could possibly lead the legalization of marijuana across the globe.

According to She Knows, women are breaking the stereotype that men are more likely to smoke marijuana. It was mentioned that women nowadays are venturing the wonders of smoking marijuana in alleviating their daily stress.

Cannabis-infused goodies used to be strictly a dessert-lover's game: THC's fat solubility and munchie-causing properties mean it matches up naturally with sweet, fatty treats. But in 2016, pretty much any genre of food you can think of has been given a marijuana makeover, as manufacturers eschew traditional brownies and cookies in favour of one-upping each other on taste, discretion, and sophistication. 

Here are six infused foods you probably didn't know existed - guaranteed to make eating your greens a pleasure.

Normally, when a company based in one state wants to sell products in another state, it starts calling truckers. For Strainz, a Las Vegas marijuana company, it was more complicated.

By early 2015, Strainz’s owners knew they wanted to expand to Colorado and Washington, the states with the most normalized marijuana markets. Despite state laws that allow the sale of marijuana, it remains a federal criminal offense to ship it across state lines. And as Nevada residents, the ­husband-and-wife co-founders weren’t eligible to apply for business licenses in either state.

The United States’ cannabis industry is rapidly expanding, but without federal legalization, large companies that do business across state lines can’t enter the market. We asked small business CEO’s and others in the industry to describe some of the trends that spurred their businesses.

 1. Cannabis-Friendly Social Media

I have just watched the closing plenary session of the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session on the world drug problem here in New York. Presidents and Prime Ministers will now move on to the climate change summit that opens tomorrow, and the thousands of government and NGO delegates who have filled the UN building in Manhattan over the last 3 days will catch their flights back to all corners of the globe. So was it worth it – three years of preparation, tens of millions of dollars of travel and meeting costs, and countless hours of debate and negotiation. Is the international community any better placed to reduce the health, social and economic problems associated with illicit drug markets?