It seems like nearly every flat surface in Terry’s home is inhabited by crotchet doilies of varying circular shapes and sizes. One of the decorative knits by her bedside, not immediately discernible at first glance, is in the shape of a seven-point plant that looks conspicuously like a cannabis leaf. Near it sits a digital alarm clock playing “The Surf of the Pacific Shores” CD on repeat. Terry says it was a Christmas gift from a friend who knows she suffers from chronic sleeplessness.

“I sometimes play it all night long,” says the 64-year-old mother of three and grandmother of seven from Chattanooga, Tennessee. “It really helps me relax.”

Right beside the knitted leaf doily and CD player sits a full, unopened bottle of ZzzQuil.

Dangling uselessly at her side, Jan Rieveley’s right arm has become a “paper weight.”

A bad fall in a dark cave in Ohio four years ago tore nerves previously made weaker from cancer radiation treatment.

“It’s pain 24/7,” says the 61-year-old owner of a small Riverside business.

Rieveley said her previous opiate “cocktail” of Percocets and other pain medications permitted her to work about two hours a week.

Rieveley hated what those opioids were doing to her. So, six months ago, her doctor prescribed pot, and it worked wonderfully. Her life on pot has improved to the point she’s working a couple of days a week.

“I like control in my life,” Rieveley said of her decision to avoid the powerful opiates of the pharmaceutical companies.

Imagine having one hundred seizures a day. Now imagine that the treatment for this requires taking 15-20 different medications per day. The medication does not entirely work and it has some debilitating side-effects and is generally very expensive. One of those medications is benzodiazepine, a medication given to those suffering from PTSD, alcohol withdrawal, insomnia and other conditions, which has devastating side-effects both in the short and long term. Now imagine that you are a child and having to do this or have this done for you. This could be your child.

The smell is unmistakable.

There must be a small mountain of pot lying somewhere in a back room of the storefront office on St-Laurent Blvd. That thick, skunky aroma — strong enough to trigger memories of a misspent youth — is apparent the moment patients are buzzed through the front door of Fondation Marijuana.

A whiteboard by the reception desk advertises strains with names like Grand Daddy Purps, Jean Guy and Blue Magic.

Despite the overwhelming smell, despite the fact that there are untold kilos of cannabis stored behind the sheetrock wall, the office has a distinctly sterile feel to it: medical forms, filing cabinets, a photocopier and two security cameras pointed toward the centre of the room.

Julien is showing us around his family’s idyllic eco campsite, just outside Canterbury in Kent. He points out the fire pits for campers, rain-flushed toilets, and the glamping field that’s brimming with luxury teepees every summer. Then he sits down on one of the picnic benches, pulls out a baggie containing Girl Scout Cookies, a high-Indica strain of cannabis, and rolls a spliff.

NFL players are three times as prone to abusing opioid pain medications due the multiple injuries typically sustained during a career in professional football. Because of this, many are now looking to cannabis as a replacement for dangerously addictive pharmaceutical painkillers.

The Gridiron Cannabis Coalition (GCC), a group consisting primarily of former and current NFL athletes, is helping to fund research into the use of cannabis oil as an alternative to opioid painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin.

The research is being conducted under the guidance of Constance Finley, founder and CEO of Constance Therapeutics, who said:

Despite its reputation for causing “the munchies”, heavy use of cannabis has been linked to a reduction in body weight and thin bones that are more likely to break, according to a new study.

Researchers at Edinburgh University tested 170 regular recreational users of the drug and 114 non-users.

Scans of their bones showed heavy users – who had smoked cannabis more than 47,000 times in their life – had a bone density that was five per cent lower than cigarette smokers.

Here is an infographic that visualizes key data points from my previous article on clinical trials of medical cananbis. Want more information? See here for my full analysis of clinical trials of medical cannabis from clinicaltrials.gov.

Key points:

Over in Florida, forward-thinking folks have been trying to get medical cannabis legalized for years. And they very nearly did exactly that. In fact, they clearly voted in favour of it just two years ago. In most states, a majority of 58% in favour of any given measure would see it implemented without a second though and considered a roaring success. In the case of Florida though, nothing of the sort. That’s because back in 2006, the rule book as to constitutional amendments was itself amended, meaning that unless any given majority vote hit 60% or more, it wouldn’t be considered a majority. As such, 58% wasn’t enough to give medical cannabis the green light, meaning it remains illegal.

Pretty depressing, on the whole.

Manufacturers and distributors of cannabidiol (CBD) based products have spoken out after the Medicine products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) told vendors they have 28 days to stop selling their products in the UK. The decision was made by the MHRA to define CBD as a medicine, meaning that companies will now require a licence to sell these products. They have raised their concerns about their customers’ access to CBD being taken away by this measure.