Weed farmers at Hotbox Jamaica's Ganja School want to know how to grow quality exports for Canada's medpot market, but Health Canada seems freaked out by the idea

Parishes in Jamaica are getting in on medpot growing - they've set up local pot growers' associations promoting farmers role as shareholders, not sharecroppers.

St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica - Jamaican ganja farmers have been using the same methods of producing marijuana for generations, but the modern weed world seems to have passed them by.

Rob Thibault is happy to have his life back.

He was part of a small rally every year Canada Day to celebrate and educate people about medicinal marijuana.

After a motorcycle accident that left him with injuries to his knee, he went through the gamut of prescribed painkillers without much success.

Thibault said that three years ago, he was in a wheelchair and a lot heavier than he is now.

“This is what I use for pain relief,” he said as he took a drag from a joint.

This was the fifth year the Niagara Cannabis Club held the event in front of the St. Catharines courthouse.

“There is a huge stigma, it affects people,” said Thibault. “We’re about protecting people from that.”

NEW YORK STATE – The New York State Department of Health will officially select five companies for medical marijuana licenses in mid-July, a spokesman told 2 On Your Side on Wednesday afternoon.

Forty-three companies, hailing from every corner of the state, have applied for the five licenses, which would allow them access to a new and lucrative industry with a potentially enormous payoff. Patients will be able to access the drug in January, when the state's program begins for the first time in history.

It's not necessarily news that cannabis may be helpful in treating cancer, specifically breast cancer, but research is building to support that theory. Now, researchers are gaining a more nuanced understanding of how cannabis can help treat these cancers.

According to research from the California Pacific Medical Research Center published last year, CBD, the non-psychoactive compound found in cannabis, can help inhibit metastasis in breast cancer cells. Metastasis is a tumor's ability to spread throughout the body.

"We have found [CBD] inhibits key genes involved in tumor progression and metastasis," Dr. Sean McAllister, a lead research in the study, told ATTN:.

At the stroke of midnight, medical marijuana was legal in Minnesota.

Moments later, the state's first cannabis clinic welcomed its first patients.

"We've been waiting a long time for this," said Kim Kelsey, holding up a small white pill bottle containing a week's supply of cannabis pills outside. The Minnesota Medical Solutions clinic in downtown Minneapolis opened its doors just after midnight July 1 for a handful of clients, like Kelsey, who didn't want to wait even a few more hours to start treatment.

"We decided we weren't going to make them an extra nine hours," said MinnMed CEO Dr. Kyle Kingsley. "It's really an honor to serve the first three patients in Minnesota."

Life-saving medications could be an import at risk if Greece defaults on its debt and exits the European Union.

Richard Bergstrom, the director general of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), sent a note to the European Union Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis on Monday notifying him that pharmaceutical companies would continue to send drugs to Greece but felt the supply could be in peril if Europe doesn’t take action soon. 

The EFPIA believes the “integrity of the medicines supply chain may be in jeopardy” if Greece reintroduces the drachma, a form of currency whose value will swiftly depreciate, according to Hirschler.

More than 50 applications from companies eager to open medical marijuana dispensaries flooded the offices of state regulators this week, two years after Massachusetts launched its ill-fated licensing process.

The submission of so many applications indicated robust interest in the state’s emerging medical marijuana industry. The state had previously licensed 15 dispensaries, with the first opening last week in Salem.

For marijuana executives who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars vying for licenses during former governor Deval Patrick’s administration, the opportunity to apply again couldn’t come soon enough.