Florida health officials are taking the very earliest steps toward rolling out rules to let patients use medical marijuana after state lawmakers failed to resolve the issue during the final hours of their session earlier this month.

The Department of Health on Thursday published a notice outlining special procedures for them to implement Amendment 2, which passed with 71 percent of the vote last November and allows patients with a list of conditions including HIV/AIDS, cancer and PTSD to access medical cannabis.

DOH faces a quickly approaching deadline of July 3 to write the rules governing what could within a few years be a $1 billion medical marijuana industry.

In the midst of a potency obsessed market where high-THC marks mean everything, there is a growing community of cannabis advocates that are pushing for less consumption as opposed to more. This tactic is called “microdosing,” a growing trend as cannabis consumption becomes more mainstream.

What Is Microdosing?

The opioid epidemic in Europe and North America should be old news.

Even the U.S. government is starting to pay attention and act on the flood of overdose deaths brought on by over-prescription of the highly addictive painkillers – synthetic drugs similar to morphine such as OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet and Suboxone – and more deadly black market substitutes.

It is not particularly reassuring, however, that the Trump administration supports new healthcare legislation that would remove the requirement that all insurers cover drug addiction treatments.

More Drugs

A medicine made from marijuana, without the stuff that gives a high, cut seizures in kids with a severe form of epilepsy in a study that strengthens the case for more research into pot's possible health benefits.

"This is the first solid, rigorously obtained scientific data" that a marijuana compound is safe and effective for this problem, said one study leader, Dr. Orrin Devinsky of NYU Langone Medical Center.

He said research into promising medical uses has been hampered by requiring scientists to get special licenses, plus legal constraints and false notions of how risky marijuana is.

he debate over whether more teens are getting high since marijuana legalization is heating up following the release of a study from Children’s Hospital Colorado.

The study has found marijuana in more teens that are examined in the emergency room of Children’s Hospital in Aurora and its affiliated urgent care centers across the metro area. But the question remains--Are more teens, overall, consuming THC since legalization?

“The trend is there, and we also wanted to show that this is just another way to look at the data,” explained Dr. G. Sam Wang of Children’s Hospital.

The legal marijuana industry brought in upwards of $4 billion in sales in 2016, according to a new report from the Marijuana Business Daily. And small-town America is riding the high.

In the eight US states where recreational marijuana is legal, the marijuana "green rush" has breathed new life into the rural communities that welcome it. Cultivation facilities, dispensaries, and infused products companies create jobs and tax revenue for the cities and states, which then supports public infrastructure and community efforts.

Here are five towns that came back from the brink thanks to legal weed.

Phoenix Life Sciences is pleased to announce that it has signed a strategic alliance agreement with Australia-based medicinal cannabis company Canndeo Ltd (100%-owned subsidiary of The Hydroponics Company ASX:THC) to cooperatively research, develop, manufacture, distribute and sell medicinal cannabis products in Australia and internationally.

New Mexico’s medical cannabis program is an ongoing experiment. Long-standing federal limits on research into the plant’s medical uses have forced patients, doctors and dispensary owners to improvise their ways to wellness; meanwhile state regulations keep a lid on unbounded growth the industry might otherwise see.

Number of medical cannabis card holders in Santa Fe County in 2015: 1,934 
2016: 3,151

Combined First quarter income for NM Dispensaries, 2017: 
$19 Million

Medical cannabis is not a panacea. Yet, the plant seems to work for so many different health conditions. With claims that cannabis heals everything from autism to breast cancer, it can certainly seem like a miracle cure.

Unfortunately, many of the health claims made about cannabis are not backed by high-quality scientific research. Though, this is not because the plant isn't beneficial.

Legal restrictions on cannabis cultivation and study around the world have barred scientists from working with the plant. This means that there are large gaps in the medical literature on the subject.

These gaps come in the form of blinded and placebo-controlled human clinical trials.

Europe may seem like an increasingly divided continent, but there is one thing that unites its people: an obsession with using tobacco to smoke cannabis. Up to 90% of Europeans combine tobacco with cannabis, according to the latest Global Drug Survey. By comparison, only 8% of Americans smoke cannabis this way.

Cannabis is illegal in the UK – and many other European countries – and it has known harms, but the reality is that many people use the drug anyway. Consequently, policy needs to reflect this reality.