Moments of joy are all too brief for Lavie Parush. They have been since the 2-year-old was born. "Gray" was the word his father used to describe his son, born unconscious. That night, Lavie had his first seizure.

"Immediately, they took him to the emergency room," said his father, Asaf Parush. "They doped him up and he was basically passed out the first week of his birth."

For six months, Parush and his wife, Noa, held on to the belief that Lavie's condition would improve. But the seizures worsened. He suffered dozens a day. Doctors diagnosed him with epilepsy and cerebral palsy. Lavie was severely brain damaged.

When Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana four years ago, one of the move's chief critics was Gov. John Hickenlooper.

The moderate Democrat said that if he could "wave a magic wand" to reverse the decision, he would. Then he called voters "reckless" for approving it in the first place, a remark he later downgraded to "risky."

“Colorado is known for many great things,” Hickenlooper said. “Marijuana should not be one of them.”

But the governor’s views have softened. During a recent panel discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, he said that despite opposing the legalization of pot, his job was to “deliver on the will of the people of Colorado.”

Why the change?

Labour will legislate for medicinal cannabis "pretty quickly" after taking office, leader Andrew Little has confirmed.

Little said cannabis products should be available to anyone suffering chronic pain or a terminal condition if their GP signed off on it.

Labour MP Damien O'Connor has drafted a bill for Parliament that would shift the onus of decision making on medicinal cannabis away from the minister to GPs and medical professionals.

Currently individual applications must first get ministerial approval for medicinal cannabis. The first Kiwi to do so was teenager Alex Renton who died shortly after approval was given.

While there is increasing evidence that medical marijuana could be a viable alternative to opioids in terms of pain management, a new report indicates that Congress is still not prepared to give the scientific community the green light to dig any deeper into this progressive concept.

Earlier last week, the U.S. House Rules Committee voted against two proposed amendments that would have required a special pain management task force to consider how weed might be used as an alternative or in conjunction with prescription painkillers.

FARMERS in the state’s South East have joined the push to allow medicinal cannabis use in SA, saying they are “ready, willing and able” to grow crops. 

The Greens are introducing a motion to Parliament calling on the State Government to get medical cannabis in SA “from the farm to the pharmacy to the patient”.

Long-time campaigner Greens MLC Tammy Franks said leaders in other states, including Victoria and New South Wales, were “forging ahead” and South Australia needed to be more involved in the national debate about making medical cannabis legally available.

“Victoria’s begun growing — (Premier) Daniel Andrews’s crop is about a foot high now, South Australia’s is non-existent,” Ms Franks said.

Lawmakers will take another shot this week at allowing doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs to prescribe medical marijuana, reigniting a smoldering debate over veteran access to the drug.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said he will propose the change as part of the department’s annual budget bill during a vote on the House floor expected as early as Wednesday.

The Senate was also set to vote on its version of the department’s annual budget bill, which includes the same proposal by Sens. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.

The proposals to give veterans access to medical marijuana through the VA in states where it is legal put Congress on the verge of making a major policy shift for the second year in a row.

Louisiana is poised to officially become the 25th state to legalize medical marijuana. On May 16, the state senators approved the House's revisions to a bill that would officially allow patients to access marijuana for medicinal uses. The bill is now headed to the desk of Governor John Bel Edwards (D), who has said he would sign it and thereby make medical marijuana officially legal in Louisiana.

The Council for the International Promotion of Costa Rica Medicine will host the Latin America Medical Cannabis Conference in Costa Rican on July 27-29th as part of ExpoMed series.

PROMED is a private not-for-profit organization, which coordinates the quality control and international promotion efforts of the medical tourism industry. Its goal is to ensure the quality of services provided by the private health industry in Costa Rica as the country becomes a major center for global medicine and medical tourism.

If the presidential election here in the United States is getting you a bit down, perhaps you’ve thought about high-tailing it to Canada.

Our neighbors north of the border really do live a charmed life, but I’ll bet you didn’t know that under Canada’s medical marijuana program, there’s now a health insurance company that reimburses the cost of cannabis for patients as part of their insurance coverage.

You heard that right — free cannabis is now possible for Canadians covered by Sun Life insurance. It’s a sign of quickly-changing perceptions of cannabis in North America, and other insurance companies are expected to follow suit.

As he sits in the sleek, modern waiting room of National Access Cannabis, Derek Ogden can envision what his quiet education clinic in Hintonburg might some day become: A bustling dispensary for medical marijuana.

For the moment, Ogden’s Ottawa operation is a membership- and information-based business. Its services include connecting clients to a network of physicians for a medical assessment, helping them to navigate the paperwork to obtain a medical cannabis card, and going as far as offering cooking-with-cannabis classes.

It just can’t have any weed on site.

“I think there’s a large number of patients that really do want to go in (to a dispensary), speak to somebody and view the various types of products,” Ogden.