ITALY HAS EASED up slightly on cannabis growers, decriminalising those who violate agreed terms on cultivating the plants for therapeutic purposes.

“This does not decriminalise those growing weed on their terrace,” warned Justice Minister Andrea Orlando. Under the new bill, people who abuse their permission to cultivate cannabis will be slapped with a fine rather than a prison sentence.

Those caught growing their own personal crop without a license still face up to a year in jail and a €4 million fine.

The aim is to help ease Italy’s notoriously congested justice system and “make sanctions more effective”, Orlando said.

TEL AVIV – Israel’s ultra-Orthodox health minister will propose a new plan to open up the market for medical marijuana, Ynet reported.

The Health Ministry, under Yakov Litzman of the religious party United Torah Judaism, published a plan to open the medical marijuana market to new farms and sellers.

“Even today there are pharmacies giving out all kinds of other medicines such as morphine,” said Litzman. “We will also sort out cannabis. There will be registration and we will supervise it.

“But it will be to the same standard as medicine.”

“Having her back after seeing her completely disappear is a great thing,” Blake’s friend Lisa McKhann said last week.

“It’s great to have her back,” agreed Blake’s father, Rick Blake of Grand Rapids, in a separate interview.

Jess Blake, now 40, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in September 2014 after she collapsed at Esko High School, where she taught geography and history to seventh- and eighth-graders.

By last spring, Blake — described by McKhann as energetic and independent — had lost her ability to make appointments, to drive, to buy groceries, to tell or understand jokes, to read, to write or to follow the plots of movies, McKhann said.

New Hampshire’s roll out of its medical marijuana program has been slow, but the coming months will see four new dispensaries opening their doors across the state.

With 180 patient applications filed and 62 therapeutic cannabis registry ID cards issued so far, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services officials say they’ve been fielding lots of calls from patients with a similar complaint: their doctors won’t agree to sign paperwork needed for an ID card.

“We’re getting calls from patients with concerns that their doctors are unwilling to certify them for the program for whatever reason,” said Michael Holt, administrative rules coordinator for the department. “Patients are taking the initiative and starting conversations with their doctors.”

CHURCHVILLE, N.Y. -- The state's foray into medical marijuana is slow going. As of Saturday, fewer than half of the dispensaries across the state are open.

"Are you going to go see Dr. Berg in a couple of weeks," Christine Emerson asked her daughter Julia. "What's he going to get for you?"

"My medicine," Julia Emerson smiled.

For 9-year-old Julia, medical marijuana would mean turning over a new leaf.

"She has what's called retractable epilepsy, or medicine resistant epilepsy, so we have trailed 14 medicines that have made her worse or not helped her at all," Christine explained.

The last few options could possibly leave Julia losing her peripheral vision, or developing aplastic anemia. It's left the family with one option: medical marijuana.

Medicinal marijuana customer says it is "like going to the farmers' market"

Lisa Campbell, a 32-year-old medicinal marijuana patient, has used dispensaries for two years to treat pain and nausea.

Here’s what she had to say in a Q & A with the Sun:

How do you access marijuana?

“Mail order is a great way to get cannabis as well but going into the store, seeing your medicine, being able to smell it – it’s like going to a farmers' market and being able to pick out your own fruit.”

Why do you use dispensaries?

HARTFORD CITY — Six-year-old Tristan Stiffler could die before the state Legislature approves cannabidiol (CBD), an extract of the marijuana plant, for the treatment of his epilepsy.

His grandmother, Pam Coats, a former Delaware County correctional officer, hopes Tristan lives a long life. But she fears that "if they don't legalize this and get him and other children like him off all these medicines that destroy his organs, he's not going to be here a year from now."

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — In the two years since the Florida Legislature passed a law allowing highly restricted use of medical marijuana to help people with seizures, the measure remains in regulatory limbo with more questions than answers.

The low-potency marijuana allowed under the Compassionate Cannabis Act of 2014 is not getting to patients and that has key supporters in the Legislature frustrated.

"We passed a law to respond to concerns from suffering families and we look up here a couple years later and we still do not have the relief promised to those families," Sen. Rob Bradley said during a recent hearing of the Regulated Industries Committee. "I find that particularly frustrating and I am sorry to those families that we are not there yet."

Medical cannabis helped ease the suffering of a terminally ill teenager but did nothing to treat his epilepsy, a medical report says.

The 10-page review is being cited by campaigners for the legalisation of medicinal cannabis as further proof as to why there should be a referendum on the issue at the next election.

The report discusses the treatment of Alex Renton, 19, who suffered from "status epilepticus", a kind of prolonged seizure, and was the first person in New Zealand to receive medicinal cannabis in hospital.

His family campaigned to have medicinal cannabis used in his treatment after his seizure in April. His mother, Rose, secretly administered Elixinol, a cannabidiol (CBD) product from the United States called, to her son when no one was around.

The psychoactive constituent of marijuana, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), causes significant and persistent behavioral changes, according to researchers at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. The study, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, shows that the long-term impacts of THC in adolescence are similar to that of the symptoms of schizophrenia.