TUCSON – An Arizona Supreme Court ruling gives medical marijuana card holders a new defense in DUI cases, according to DUI attorney James Nesci.

“But the defense is kind of screwy because you have to prove that you were not impaired,” Nesci said. “How do you prove you're not impaired?”

Crime labs test for a chemical called THC, which can stay in a person’s blood long after they use marijuana.

“There are no studies that show how much THC impairs a person. That's the first thing,” Nesci said. “Second thing we also know is this, tolerance plays a big deal in that.”

Nesci believes the new ruling may be unconstitutional, but it could be the law for years.

Many doctors reluctant to use treatment that lacks federal OK

KANSAS CITY, Mo. —Efforts to make cannabis oil available to Missourians with a severe type of epilepsy are off to a slow start, mostly because neurologists are reluctant to certify patients to try a treatment that does not have federal approval.

In 2014, the Missouri Legislature legalized cannabis oil to treat an intractable type of epilepsy that can't be controlled by medications. Darla Templeton, director of the Epilepsy Foundation of Missouri and Kansas, estimates 18,000 Missourians could be eligible for the treatment.

A strange South Dakota law is drawing renewed attention this year amidst confusion over how Native tribes can grow and distribute cannabis. Passed in 2001, the South Dakota law prohibits the “internal and physical possession, distribution, and manufacture of marijuana” by all non-Natives within the state, with exceptions for Natives consuming on tribal land.

The law was challenged and brought to the Supreme Court back in 2004, when police stopped a man in traffic, found him in possession of a scale, and pressured him into consenting to a urine test. He failed the test and was slapped with a criminal charge for internal possession.

Lynette Shaw, the self-proclaimed "godmother of marijuana dispensaries," is thrilled that tech is helping bring cannabis into the mainstream.

"It's fabulous. I'm honored to see my godchildren creating all of this," the 61-year-old said here Friday at the inaugural New West Summit, a two-day conference on the budding billion-dollar convergence of pot with technology, business and media.

Shaw, who in 1997 opened one of the first legal cannabis dispensaries in the US, received a lifetime achievement award at the confab, for her work as an activist in legalizing medical marijuana. And her "godchildren" were well represented at the summit, which wrapped up this weekend.

WILLITS — Except for traffic passing through on Highway 101, this northern Mendocino County city is relatively quiet much of the year. But for three months in the fall, it gets an influx of world travelers lured by marijuana-trimming jobs, temporarily swelling the town’s population of under 5,000 and instilling it with an international flavor.

For the week ended Friday, November 20, the spot price index for a pound of cannabis decreased by $26 (about 1%) from $1,755 in the prior week to $1,729. The simple (non-volume-weighted) average price for a gram remained unchanged at $4.70.

About two-thirds of the past week’s transactions occurred in a range of $1,655 to $2,605 per pound, according to the analysts at Cannabis Benchmarks. The volume-weighted average price in Colorado fell about 1%, from $1,933 on November 13 to $1,907 a pound last week.The futures price for December remained flat at $1,615. For the month of January 2016, the forward price also remained unchanged at $1,665 a pound. The six-month forward price for May 2016 is $2,030 a pound, unchanged from the prior week.

The board tasked with writing rules for Alaska’s recreational marijuana industry voted Friday to allow for people to use pot at certain stores that will sell it, a first among the four states that have legalized the drug.

The 3-2 vote by the Marijuana Control Board also changed the definition of the term “in public” to allow for consumption at some pot shops, none of which are open yet. Colorado, Washington and Oregon have legalized recreational marijuana but ban its public use, including in pot stores.

“This would put, I think, Alaska in the forefront on this issue,” said Chris Lindsey, a legislative analyst with the Marijuana Policy Project.

As I and my colleagues have predicted so very, very often, the Marijuana Use Disorders have more than doubled in the past decade on the heels of relaxed legislation concerning the drug, and the increase in use of the substance among our youth and adults.

I know that there are those out there who have read my previous articles on marijuana, and say, “Dr. Jones, aren’t you beating a dead horse?” I assure you all that I am surely not. The horse is very much alive and kicking, and the more we make ourselves aware, the better.

Researchers at the Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) have found a surprising correlation between marijuana dependency and genes, as well as childhood sexual abuse. The reason why some child survivors of adversity go on to become marijuana-dependant while others are able to use the recreational drug without problems may be explained by genetic variations in the endocannabinoid system (ECS) in the brain.

A system of cannabinoid receptors located throughout the peripheral and central nervous systems of the mammalian brain comprises the ECS. It controls numerous physiological processes such as mood, sensation, memory and appetite as well as the psychoactive effects of cannabis.

Small quantities of THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the main chemical responsible for marijuana’s psychological effects, could be engineered from yeast, according to a paper published in August  by  scientists at the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany.

With New York recently permitting five select medical marijuana companies to open dispensaries across the state, these companies, along with medical marijuana companies all over the nation, now have the question of whether this development could be used to supplement their supplies of conventional marijuana.