Buying snack foods and beverages is a common occurrence. We routinely review the package label of all the ingredients, as well as the serving size and calorie content. We trust that the products we buy are made in a safe, clean environment.

Yet, for marijuana infused food products, no set standards exist. Currently, the food and beverage products containing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot, have absolutely no oversight, and there is no way a consumer can know how potent the snack item is or if it contains an allergen. Users of these products really have no idea what they are smoking or eating and this unknown can be deadly.

• Ben Oakley, 20, is one of only 20 'Stiff Person Syndrome' with in Australia 
• The rare disease causes painful seizures which can last for hours 
• Cannabis oil is the only thing which alleviates his symptoms, but is illegal
• He's campaigning for it to be legalised in New South Wales
• Recently, he attended NSW parliament to push for it to be decriminalised 

A young man suffering from an extremely rare disease has found a solution which may save his life - medical marijuana - but knows every time he uses it he could be arrested.

A teenager’s appeal to have his request to use a cannabis-based medicine has been approved, three days before he finally succumbed to cancer.

The youngster had been pleading with the Health Ministry for two years to allow him to take the drug to ease his suffering but his request was only granted three days before he died.

The 19-year-old’s tragic case began when the medication he was taking at the time – to help ease his suffering – were not taking effect. He had previously been diagnosed with an incurable and inoperable brain tumour.

It was then that his doctors recommended that he make a request to the Health Ministry to allow him to take medicine – banned in Cyprus because it contains cannabis.

An NFL official admitted for the first time Monday evening that there is a link between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). In response, Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle Eugene Monroe sprang into action with a series of 38 tweets and six retweets advocating for research on how cannabinoids (i.e. medicinal marijuana) can help curb traumatic brain injuries.

A sampling of Monroe's message:

At least once a week, I hear from patients that smoking marijuana helps them to relax and to sleep. I know that other clinicians hear the same thing because they ask me about it at insomnia workshops. Does cannabis really improve sleep?

Several studies done in the 1970s examined the effects of smoked marijuana on objective sleep patterns, measured using polysomnography. This method of overnight recording involves the tracking of brain waves, eye movements and muscle tone in order to distinguish the sleep stages and their pattern of occurrence throughout the night.

I had someone ask me the other day why I support the use of medicinal marijuana. “We could have kids and innocent people overdosing, and that alone makes it unworthy of any support,” she said. That was sort of the Cliff Notes version of a very long and drawn out conversation I had with a very well-meaning, yet totally uneducated person regarding medicinal marijuana. This person could not understand why parents would administer something to their children without clear dosage guidelines, and when an overdose could cause them to die.

Two of the leading Canadian companies that help veterans file reimbursement claims for medicinal marijuana say the spike in payments from the federal government over the past couple of years comes as no surprise.

Trauma Healing Centers and Marijuana for Trauma were responding to Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr launching an internal program review.

CBC News reported Monday that Hehr wants answers following a nearly 12-fold increase in the number of veterans turning to the government to pay for their medically prescribed marijuana since 2013-2014.

Hehr said he was shocked to find there was "no policy developed by the former government around the use of medical marijuana."

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Addiction to prescription painkillers and heroin has grown so deadly that the Obama administration wants to spend more than $1 billion over the next two years fighting it. Nearly all of the money would go to making anti-addiction medications, including buprenorphine, more available.

Yet in the midst of the worst epidemic of unintentional drug overdose in U.S. history — mortality rates are four to fives times as high as in the mid-1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — it can be harder to get drugs to treat an addiction than it is to get the drugs that feed it.

The Meehan family moved to Maine to have legal access to cannabis to treat Cyndimae's rare form of epilepsy, and she was able to attend school after the passage of legislation last year.

On her last day, Cyndimae Meehan did the things she loved.

She colored. She played. She took a nap in her father’s arms.

Cyndimae, whose fight for access to medical cannabis to treat a rare form of epilepsy brought her and her mother before legislators in Maine and Connecticut, died Sunday while sleeping on her father’s chest on the couch in their Augusta home. She was 13.

Renowned scientist Dr Henry Lowe has pointed to the huge foreign exchange potential of nutraceuticals and medical cannabis and says that Jamaica needs to move quickly to capture its share of what is a rapidly growing global market.

“With limited effort, there is an estimated potential earning of over US$300 million from these two products in the next three years if the products are properly marketed,” Lowe, who has developed a number of nutraceutical products using Jamaican plants, told the 50th anniversary annual general meeting of the Jamaica Exporters’ Association last week