Many activists are fighting to legalize medical marijuana. This plant could help so many people. We need to make it legal across the country.

Since Colorado and other states are legalizing it, their rates of drug prescriptions have gone down. I’m giving you some statistics that show how much marijuana could be helping people if it were legal everywhere in the U.S., with focus on the medical aspect of legalizing medical marijuana.

As long as athletes don’t show up stoned at competition, it’s all good, right?

This year’s Olympic games has been more stressful than most amid  athletes dropping out over concerns of Zika virus and Russia’s doping scandal that has banned some of their competitors.

Despite a Supreme Court of Canada decision that gives sick Canadians the right to use medical cannabis oils, Ottawa is reimbursing the country’s veterans for dried pot only, potentially pushing them to less healthy options of smoking or vaporizing the drug.

That has prompted a group of commercial medical marijuana growers to urge Ottawa to expand medical marijuana coverage for former soldiers – a small but lucrative patient base for Canada’s two dozen licensed producers – to include the ingestible oils.

Jordan Chambers dropped in to the Weeds marijuana dispensary on Montreal Road recently and bought a package of cannabis-infused chocolate turtles and two coconut dreamy bars.

“I think this is great,” she said of the dispensary, whose display cases are stuffed with jars of dried weed and packages of cookies, brownies and candy. Staff warned her not to eat the treats in one sitting, because they are potent. 

The federal government has warned that the marijuana products sold at illegal dispensaries such as Weeds are unregulated and could be unsafe.

A cotton gin that sat empty for decades in this small North Texas town could be filled next year with the first cannabis plants legally grown in the state.

The man investing in the old buildings plans to open a greenhouse and processing facility to make cannabis oil as a medical treatment for people with severe epilepsy. A Texas statute enacted in 2015 paves the way for the cultivation of non-psychoactive cannabis for that purpose. It was  the only marijuana-related bill approved in the last legislative session.

He is an award-winning chef who has prepared injury-healing meals for NFL and NBA stars such as Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups and Von Miller. He is a cannabis connoisseur who teaches people how to prepare nutritious food with marijuana.

She is a former corporate executive who served on President Obama’s National Finance Committee in 2008 and now runs a marijuana dispensary. She is a passionate political activist who wants to spread the word on the medical and social benefits of pot.

Dennie Warren, whose wife was diagnosed with lung cancer, has become an advocate for legalization of cannabis oil for medical purposes.

Pressure is growing for government to swiftly follow through on its commitment to make regulatory changes to allow doctors to prescribe cannabis oil for medical purposes.

Premier Alden McLaughlin said in May that government’s lawyers had been instructed to draft the necessary legislative changes to allow limited use of the marijuana derived product in the Cayman Islands.

Some cancer patients in Cayman believe cannabis oil treatment, though unproven in clinical trials, may represent their last chance. Medical marijuana is also known to help patients with pain related to chemotherapy and radiation.

We were going to Denver for a wedding and a concert and I wanted to check out the pot scene. The cracks I hear about supporting Gary Johnson for president are mostly about his support for legalizing marijuana.

Colorado and I go way back, to a teenage “coming of age” camping trip with Coors, other “provisions,” and hitch-hiking girls.

It was The Seventies.

My wife and I lived in Denver after our first daughter was born. I was “becoming an Advertising guy” after my first stint in radio; a freshly-minted Yuppie pushing a stroller.

It was the Eighties.

The New Mexico Department of Health came under fire Thursday for its handling of a backlog of applications for medical marijuana identification cards, with one Democratic senator suggesting the agency could face court sanctions in the case of a lawsuit and the state auditor calling the situation a “public health emergency.”

The average time for processing a medical marijuana ID card is now 43 days, continuing to exceed the 30-day limit set by state law, according to DOH.

But an agency spokesman said the department is making progress in processing a surge of requests for the state-required ID cards – both from new patients and those seeking renewals.

As the cannabis legalization movement continues to grow, so does public education about the long-demonized pot plant. There is an increased understanding of marijuana as being less of a dangerous drug (though the U.S. government still stubbornly classifies  it as such) and more of a potentially beneficial medicinal herb .