We all know that one friend or family member that is very stubborn about their stance against medical marijuana. You can tell them until you are blue in the face about the medical benefits of marijuana, about how the federal government has patents involving the medical benefits of marijuana, and about all the science and personal stories that are out there that prove that marijuana is medicine. The most common line I get is ‘you are not a doctor or scientist, so what do you know.’

The opioid painkiller and heroin epidemic has led to a record number of deadly drug overdoses, with the US recording an all-time high of 47,000 overdose deaths — two-thirds of which were opioid-related — in 2014. In states like New Hampshire, the crisis is so bad that it's overtaken the economy and national security as voters' top concern.

But as awareness of the crisis grows, one of the more exotic policy ideas for dealing with the epidemic has gotten relatively little attention: legalizing medical marijuana.

Most legal plantations of cannabis in Latin America is neither in Uruguay nor in Mexico nor Peru, but in a rural area of southern 

The administration of liquid cannabis extracts containing THC is associated with the mitigation of various symptoms of Alzheimer’s-related agitation and dementia, according to observational trial datapublished online ahead of print in The Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Israeli investigators assessed the use of cannabis oil as an adjunct pharmacotherapy treatment in ten Alzheimer’s disease patients over a period of several weeks. Researchers reported that drug administration was associated with a significant reduction in patients’ symptom severity scores. Specifically, cannabis oil ingestion corresponded with decreased levels of aggression, irritability, apathy, and delusions.

Move would ensure ‘dignity’ of patients, could be implemented within six months, health minister says

Israel could be just six months away from allowing general practitioners to prescribe cannabis, Health Minister Yaakov Litzman said Wednesday.

Litzman is leading a reform of the Health Ministry’s medical cannabis policy that seeks to devolve the authority to prescribe the drug from the ministry’s centralized medical cannabis unit to the nation’s 23,000 doctors, a move that would dramatically ease access to the drug.

Ten years ago this month, Rhode Island legalized medical marijuana. Today, nearly 13,000 patients are enrolled, not to mention more than 2000 caregivers. And a hundred new applications arrive every week. Is it sustainable?

Ellen Lenox Smith taught seventh grade social studies. She was nearing retirement when the pain got so intense she couldn’t bear it. A bone was slipping into her throat, she couldn’t breathe, and her body seemed to be falling apart. After months of tests, doctors finally discovered what ailed her: Ehlers Danlos.

“I was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos, which is a connective tissue disorder, which means all of the ligaments and tendons in my body are like overstretched elastic bands.”

Eaze delivers medical medical marijuana in plastic containers. The company has released the first compilation of data about its customers.

Many medical cannabis users indulge in the morning, “waking-and-baking,” and Northern Californians prefer trippier kinds of marijuana than folks in Southern California.

Those are among the insights gleaned from the aggregate use patterns of 100,000 clients of Eaze, a medical marijuana delivery service that released information Tuesday about users in the 80 California cities where it operates.

Marijuana Movement

Eaze CEO Keith McCarty hopes that sharing the data will help shape the new medical marijuana regulations being crafted in California.

Texas will begin to prepare to issue licenses to retailers for the sale of marijuana-based products, reported MySanAntonio. The licenses will enable certain dispensaries to sell products with low levels of THC, such as cannabis oil.

The state has approved the products for people diagnosed with intractable epilepsy, a form of the disease where seizures cannot be treated with traditional drugs. The program was slated to be launched Jan. 10, but the first dispensary will not be licensed until June 2017. License applications will not be finalized and available to companies until this summer.

It's not JUST about the money.

I know, this is not something most folks expect to read in an investment newsletter. So let me explain...

A few years ago, when I first started writing about the legal marijuana space, I was accused of compromising my ethics in an attempt to make a buck. But nothing could be further from the truth.

There are actually a number of reasons I invest in the legal marijuana space.

Yes, the main reason is because it's insanely profitable.

Many trials are continuing throughout the world into the use of medicinal marijuana

The use of medical cannabis is an issue that won't go away. The word has got out that it can relieve the agony of dying patients. So those patients and their families will use it, whatever anyone else might say.

A new report says medicinal cannabis helped ease the suffering of Alex Renton, 19, whose case received a lot of publicity last year. Alex had "status epilepticus", a terrible form of epilepsy, and was allowed to use Elixinol, a cannabidoil (CBD), for a short time before he died on July 1.