Most medical cannabis advocates can name one key moment in their life when they knew they had to come out of the closet and campaign for regulated, legal access to the cannabis plant.

But there is also a clutch of extraordinary individuals who, when confronted with real evidence about the cannabis plant’s therapeutic potential, have done a 180 degree turn, transforming themselves from herb hater to cannabis campaigner.

1. The Doctor

Dr Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent for CNN, is perhaps the most high profile cannabis critic to come out in favour of the plant. 

More than 100 new patients have received permission to use a form of medical marijuana in Georgia this month, bringing the statewide total of people using the product to more than 1800 less than three years after the state began the program.

They still don’t have easy access to the drug, which can’t legally be produced in Georgia or brought across state lines under federal law. Instead, patients and families have to find a manufacturer willing to ship products or travel to another state where the oil is made and risk being caught breaking the law as they return home.

The changes medical marijuana brings to Arkansas will likely be less widespread than advocates hope or opponents fear, at least at first, recent history and research suggest.

The voter-approved constitutional amendment allowing medical marijuana use will soon fall into place. The state plans to start taking license applications for shops to distribute marijuana products and cultivation facilities in July. The people who qualify to use and possess those products could be able to apply for the necessary state cards even sooner.

Considering how unpopular marijuana was with the public during the mid-1990s, it's phenomenal to take a step back and witness just how rapidly pot's presence has grown in the United States over the past 21 years.

Marveling marijuana's expansion

In 1996, California became the first state to legalize the use of medical cannabis for compassionate use. Since California, 27 additional states and Washington, D.C., have followed. Five new states legalized medical weed last year alone, including Pennsylvania and Ohio, which chose to do so entirely through the legislative process.

Delaware’s second medical marijuana dispensary opened Friday in Lewes, nearly two years after a first facility opened its doors in Wilmington.

Both dispensaries are operated by First State Compassion Center, which previously won bids with the state.

The Lewes site is located at 12000 Old Vine Boulevard. It is open six days a week from 10:30 to 6:30 weekdays and and 10 to 4 Saturdays.

“Our foremost goal is the care we take of our patients, and that includes having the best medicine and the most caring staff,” FSCC President Mark Lally said in a statement.

In a statement at the lauded Cleveland Clinic, Drug Enforcement Administration acting head Chuck Rosenberg said: “marijuana is not medicine.” The event was a Cleveland Clinic Community Healthcare Forum held on Thursday, May 25th, and the topic for the evening was “Our Nation’s Opioid Epidemic.”

Five people have been appointed to the state of Michigan's newly created medical marijuana board, Gov. Rick Snyder announced Friday.

The board will be tasked with implementing the system that allows licensing of medical marijuana operations, such as dispensaries, processors, growers and transporters. It will be housed within the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.

License applications for such operations will be available by the end of the year.

"This board will help provide the proper oversight of medical marihuana facilities to keep the public safe by ensuring proper health and safety standards are being met," Snyder said in a statement.

Santa Rosa focuses on the companies involved in cannabis now that the sought-after drug has been legalized in the state of California. The city of Santa Rosa and its business-minded residents have only two priorities in mind. These priorities include building a vast empire of new housing or engaging in the real estate and marijuana business.

However, with these two top priorities of the business-minded folks of Santa Rosa, a feud has ensued. Marijuana business can mean growing your pot in a land that you either lease or own. On the other hand, farming marijuana can also mean occupying a huge part of the area to make room for the plants to grow.

Adding cannabis to everything from iced coffee to breath mints, local startups are jockeying for a bite of California’s growing marijuana edibles market as the state gears up to allow recreational pot sales.

The industry that barely existed 10 years ago — apart from a few bakers making pot brownies in their home kitchens — now shows no sign of slowing down.

“There’s a brand boom going on right now, particularly in preparation for adult use legalization here,” said Troy Dayton, CEO of The Arcview Group, a research and investment services firm focusing on marijuana businesses. “Not all of them are going to do well, but there’s just so many different types of edibles hitting different market segments.”

Now that marijuana has been legalized is so many states, and is about to become legal across Canada, new concerns have been raised over people driving or being on the job while impaired by recent marijuana use. Well, those concerns are being addressed.

Like the familiar breathalyzer used to test whether a driver is behind the wheel while impaired by alcohol, a similar hand-held device that tests for recent marijuana use is already being tested in Canada and the United States, including a small device being tested in California that uses a small sample of saliva to test for six drugs within minutes.