Critics are calling “reefer madness” on a new study from Australia claiming smoking pot will give your kids cancer.

Cannabis has been shown in cell, animal and limited human trials to prevent, halt or kill cancer, researchers note. Australia is getting world-famous for their reefer-madness research, this time for equating pot to the notorious birth defect-causing chemical thalidomide.

On Tuesday, Associate Professor Stuart Reece and Professor Gary Hulse at The University of Western Australia released a paper called “Chromothripsis and epigenomics complete causality criteria for cannabis- and addiction-connected carcinogenicity, congenital toxicity and heritable genotoxicity”, published July 2016 in the journal “Mutation Research”.

The exact origins of the cultivation of cannabis under artificial light are hard to pinpoint. But it's sure that the United States, especially California, and the Netherlands were the indoor culture's nurseries in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Breeders like Old Ed Holloway, Dave Watson (aka Sam the Skunkman), Wernard Bruining, Nevil Schoenmakers, Robert C. Clarke and Ben Dronkers as well as a few other pioneers met and worked in Amsterdam to create the basis for the thousands of strains that cannabis patients and recreational users enjoy worldwide today. 

In this day and age, convenience means more than just getting a meal delivered by sending an emoji via text, summoning a complete stranger to be your personal chauffeur without even speaking to them first or being able to adjust the delicately sensitive temperature of a smart vape from an app. In these times, convenience means having all the information needed in the palm of your hand and the emergence of new apps are helping to build the cannatech connection by providing the community with the type of convenient, always-available technology other industries have been enjoying for some time. Check out these companies and how they’re helping the cannabis industry catch up with the rest of the technological cosmos.

If you can't, or don't, want to visit a brick-and-mortar dispensary to browse strains and get recommendations, you're going to be spoiled for choice in 2016

WoahStork, created by UCLA Ph.D student Nicco Reggente, is among the latest online services designed to lower barriers to entry for cannabis newbies, and serve more seasoned users looking for a predictable, customizable high.

Panaxia has devised a method of extracting precise dosages of medical cannabis.

Israel generic drugs and medical devices company Panaxia has signed an agreement with Ultra Health, the leading medical cannabis distribution company in New Mexico, to build a cannabis processing plant. The plant will be built on one of Ultra Health's farms in New Mexico, and its products will be marketed in the US by Ultra Health.

Panaxia said that the six-month pilot project would include a commitment to buying merchandise for $250,000. Ultra Health operates in five US states besides New Mexico, providing potential growth for Panaxia's business. At the same time, Panaxia is also negotiating similar agreements with other US growers.

The legalization of medical cannabis has come with the need to reform and even create many policies and regulations in order to provide a safe framework for its production and consumption. One important issue up for contention is the use of pesticides on cannabis plants.

The word pesticide is inherently scary sounding. The suffix -cide invokes death as in genocide or homicide. However unfortunate this may be, pesticides are an integral part of the agriculture industry. In general, pesticides or pest control products are chemical or biological agents that discourage the presence of fungi or insects and stop them from destroying the plant and spreading disease.

Cannabis has long been cultivated outdoors and is one of the oldest agricultural crops in existence. Growing indoors, however, has been around for less than a century and came about as a result of prohibition. Most advancements in cannabis production have occurred during the era of indoor cultivation; staying out of sight was initially a way to protect the grower from the laws against cannabis. As technology advanced, the industry was able to expand its knowledge of the plant by leaps and bounds, and this was also true for areas where outdoor farming managed to succeed like Southern Oregon and Northern California.

Swiss scientists have taken a leaf from the pothead recipe book to brew an e-cigarette cannabis liquid for medical use they said Thursday is safer than a joint and better than a pill.

"Therapeutic cannavaping", they argued, should be examined as an alternative to existing treatments which can come in the form of a syrup, pill, mouth spray, skin patch, suppository, or a plain-old spliff.

The team copied an improvised method popular among marijuana afficionados using butane gas to extract and concentrate cannabinoids -- the active, high-causing compounds of cannabis.

E-cig vaporisers can produce the health boost of cannabis without getting users high, according to new research.

Scientists say the battery charged devices may provide an alternative method of administering the drug to relieve pain, while avoiding the mind bending properties of an illegal spliff.

In a study cannabinoids, chemicals from the plant which are said to have a range of benefits, were extracted with butane gas to make concentrated hash oil in an e-liquid, which could be atomized.

The National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) and Brainsy, Inc., are collaborating to launch the Cannabis Expert Calling Network (ECN®), a knowledge-sharing platform connecting cannabis industry experts with entrepreneurs and information-seekers online and via paid telephone consultations.

NCIA members who are experts in their area of the cannabis industry will be invited to set up personalized profiles on the Cannabis ECN system, which allows information-seekers to find and contact them, then conduct over-the-phone consultations at a rate set by the expert.