As a registered nurse working in trauma and rehabilitation centers in Kansas, Jennifer Shepherd cared for patients who weren't benefiting from the pain medications prescribed to them.

She noticed a pattern that prompted her to detour from her 13-year career in the traditional medical field. No matter what type of pain or medical problem the patients were experiencing, they tended to be prescribed the same opiates or steroid pain relievers. Yet some didn’t want to take their medication due to side effects associated with them, and others weren’t getting enough pain relief, she said.

“I couldn’t figure out why I had 20 patients with the same pills,” she said. “At that point, I started noticing that Western medicine wasn’t helping as many patients as I thought it should.”

IN AN Australian-first, Lanai Carter’s four-year battle to have medicinal cannabis legalised for her son’s use has been won.

The Loganholme mother this morning confirmed to the Albert & Logan News that Queensland Health had cleared the way for her teenage son, Lindsay, to receive a shipment of certified medicinal cannabis.

Mrs Carter said she was “relieved’’ the cannabis oil capsules had been approved to treat her boy’s brain tumour but cautioned the family was still waiting on approval for “vaporised cannabis for pain, nausea and appetite stimulation’’.

Gov. Robert Bentley has signed into law a bill to allow people with debilitating medical conditions to use cannabidiol, which is made from the same plant as marijuana.

The bill, known as Leni's Law, expands on a bill passed two years ago, known as Carly's Law, that authorized a UAB study on using cannabidiol to treat people with severe seizure disorders.

"As a physician, I believe it is extremely important to give patients with a chronic or debilitating disease the option to consider every possible option for treatment," Bentley said in a statement.

"With Leni's Law, citizens in Alabama will have access to cannabidiol that may help with treatment. 

Although a wide variety of extracts, concentrates and edibles are sold at medical dispensaries such as Little Amsterdam in Southwest Portland, edibles are not yet available for purchase to recreational customers in Oregon. That changes on June 2.

Oregonians interested in purchasing marijuana edibles have to wait less than a month until they can get their fix. The Oregon Health Authority issued rules Wednesday for the sale of marijuana edibles under the state’s early recreational marijuana sales program.

A naturopath has been suspended from practice for providing medical consultations via Skype to help patients obtain medical marijuana from pot dispensaries.

The B.C. College of Naturopathic Physicians says Dr. Jonas Laforge of Langley is one of six naturopaths who have been investigated in connection with marijuana dispensaries.

Four of the cases didn't meet the bar for a public notification; one other is still under investigation.

Those were the words of 43-year old Timothy Dillon, as he lay bleeding on the ground after being shot by police, following a five-hour long standoff where he threatened to shoot the officers, goading them to kill him “Let’s get this over with.” Instead of getting it over with and killing him, as Dillon had hoped in an attempted ‘suicide by cop,’ deputies administered first aid and saved his life, allowing him to “still hold [his] wife, hug [his] da

The country’s largest medical marijuana dispensary, with more than 100,000 cannabis patients, avoided a four-year long shutdown effort by the federal government on Tuesday.

Harborside Health Center in Oakland has faced closure since 2012, when the federal government attempted to shut down the marijuana dispensary and seize the buildings that house the business, councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan told the SFGate.

Last week, this column was pretty pessimistic. Apologies, but when a state in my own beloved Northeast decides to put the kibosh on a law that would reduce the number of prisoners in their jails in and increase the amount of tax dollars in its coffers, it grates at the nerves. New Hampshire did it, and Vermont did too, but to the East, Maine has given New England a new hope for legalization. 

Proponents of medical marijuana in Nebraska say they will launch a petition drive with the goal of letting voters decide whether to legalize the drug for medicinal purposes in 2018.

Three groups that support medical cannabis recently closed the door on putting the question on the November general election ballot, said Maggie Graham, an officer of Omaha NORML, which stands for National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. They would have needed to gather tens of thousands of voter signatures by a July 7 deadline.

A group comprised of doctors, patients, health charities and scientists is urging Ottawa to invest $25 million over the next five years for research into the health effects and potential therapeutic benefits of medical marijuana.

In a report released Wednesday, the Medical Cannabis Research Roundtable highlighted the lack of reliable, peer-reviewed Canadian-based research into marijuana as a potential treatment for a variety of diseases and conditions.