A Vancouver-based medical marijuana producer is the first to get a Health Canada permit to grow cannabis using natural sunlight.

Tantalus Labs founder Dan Sutton says SunLab is the new generation of sustainable, natural and highly controlled infrastructure for growing weed.

“It’s sort of unreasonable to grow virtually any plant in an indoor, artificial environment where one is trying to replicate nature. We’re really proud of our knowledge or quality assurance, of processed standardization, of creating efficiencies and repeatability out of processes and systems in an agricultural environment.”

He adds it’s one-of-a-kind, and took five years to develop.

It’s been three years since Guam residents voted in favor of a medical marijuana program, and the island is still without a cannabis commission. And while GovGuam drags its feet, people with treatable illnesses, like 24-year-old Isha Gabriel, continue to suffer without a natural alternative to prescription medication.

In 2013, Gabriel began showing symptoms of multiple sclerosis, or MS, and was officially diagnosed the following year. MS is an unpredictable and often disabling disease of the central nervous system that disrupts the flow of information within the brain, and between the brain and body, according to the National MS Society. It is currently incurable.

Annalise Lujan was in the middle of a gymnastics meet in April when she started vomiting and lost all feeling in her legs. 

As the 12-year-old fell into a crippling seizure, her parents rushed her to the hospital, and she was put into a medically induced coma to save her brain from damage. 

Annalise was then flown to a specialist unit at Phoenix Children's Hospital, where she was diagnosed with a rare epilepsy syndrome, known as febrile infection-related epilepsy syndrome (FIRES).

The condition causes Annalise to have seizures continuously, which can lead to brain injury and even death. It meant doctors couldn't bring her out of the coma until they had an effective method to prevent her seizures.

Let’s start with some good news.

Medical Marijuana is safe for the time being. Section 537 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017 prohibits the DOJ and the DEA from using any funds in the bill to prevent states from “implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/244/text

Nicky Haynes has almost forgotten the pain she used to be in. She has been taking Sativex, a drug derived from cannabis, for about five years and says it has hugely improved her life. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1994, and her condition progressively worsened to the point where she couldn’t sleep, where reaching for a glass of water would trigger a spasm and she was in constant pain. The first time she took Sativex was during a long car journey, fearful that she wouldn’t be able to walk when she got out. But she was able to walk better than she had for a long time.

In May, Drug Enforcement Agency acting administrator Chuck Rosenberg caused a stir by proclaiming, in a speech in Ohio, that “marijuana is not medicine.”

Many people immediately disagreed, including The Hill, which wrote that Rosenberg might as well have said “the Earth is flat.”

Arkansas will soon begin taking applications from those who hope to grow and dispense medical marijuana, though the state's strong religious heritage and restrictions imposed by the Legislature will limit where greenhouses and distributors can operate.

Voters last November made Arkansas the first Bible Belt state to legalize medical marijuana, clearing its use by people with certain medical conditions. While setting up rules for licensing, legislators said growers must be at least 3,000 feet from churches, schools or daycares, while dispensaries must be 1,500 feet away. The limits will make it tough for some towns and small cities to host marijuana operations.

As the owner of Canada’s first boutique which specialises in selling cannabidiol (CBD), one of the active ingredients in marijuana, Danielle Blair is used to pushing boundaries. So to her, using CBD on animals is as normal as giving it to humans. 

In recent years, the evidence that cannabis can be used to treat chronic pain and mental illness among other conditions has stacked up, and the drug is being legalised in more and more countries, from certain states in the US to Jamaica. Meanwhile in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently pass a law legalising cannabis that should come into effect by 2018. For now, medical marijuana producers can sell cannabis-based oils to those with a prescription. 

A mother who's fought tirelessly to have restrictions removed around medicinal cannabis following the death of her son says today's a day to celebrate, but there's still work to do. 

The Government has removed restrictions on medicinal cannabis meaning Kiwis will now be able to get it from their doctor. 

Rose Renton's son Alex brought the issue into the headlines in 2015, when he died after falling into a "status epilepticus", a type of prolonged seizure.