With an alarmingly high percentage of youth having psychotic episodes from ganja abuse, the National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA) is now rolling out a national public education strategy specifically targeting the younger population.

In fact, Jamaica's leading addiction psychiatrist, Dr Winston De La Haye, said he was seeing an increasing number of young patients experiencing ganja-related health problems following February's passing of the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act 2015 (also referred to as the Ganja Reform Law), which took effect on April 15.

A history of cannabis use is inversely correlated with diabetes mellitus, according to an epidemiological review published online ahead of print in the journal Epidemiology.

Investigators at Michigan State University, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics performed a meta-analytic study assessing cannabis use and diabetes in the general population.

“Recently active cannabis smoking and diabetes mellitus are inversely associated,” they determined. Authors estimated that subjects with a history of cannabis use were about 30 percent less likely to have diabetes compared to non-using subjects.

Expert peers will on Wednesday claim cannabis should be rescheduled so it can be prescribed by doctors for medicinal use

A mum crippled by pain will have a national spotlight shone on her fight to take medicinal cannabis.

Former nurse Lara Smith is one of just a handful of people prescribed Bedrocan for spinal arthritis but must travel to Holland every three months, running a customs gauntlet, to pick up her supply.

But today the House of Lords will hear from experts how re-scheduling cannabis could help thousands of other people suffering from debilitating illnesses, including MS.

Chronic pain is a debilitating condition that predisposes humans to long years of pain. Now, scientists have found a way to reverse the condition as they discovered the molecular pathway for chronic pain in laboratory animals. Thus, it has opened doors and gave light to the treatment for Americans.

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke,chronic pain is now believed to be a chronic disease condition just like other diseases like asthma and diabetes. It varies from acute pain in the sense that it lasts longer and it is more resistant to many medical treatments.

ALBANY, N.Y. --  With time running out in Albany, the Senate and Assembly approved a bill to give quicker access to medical marijuana for patients who need it, even before the Compassionate Care Act is scheduled to go into full effect -- but there is still one more hurdle before advocates start celebrating. 

"This is a huge win. You have a situation where you have bipartisan strong, strong bipartisan agreement," said Gabriel Sayegh, of the Drug Policy Alliance.

"If these kids who are having in some cases dozens of seizures a day have to wait until the system is up and running, optimistically sometime in 2016, that's an awful lot of torture to these children," said Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan.

A teenager in an induced coma in Wellington Hospital has been given his first dose of medicinal cannabis after it arrived from the United States.

Alex Renton, 19, has been in hospital since April 8 in "status epilepticus", a kind of prolonged seizure. At 1pm today he was administered a medicinal cannabidiol (CBD), Elixinol.

Doctors began to slowly lift Renton's sedation on Friday in preparation for the CBD arriving after associate minister of health Peter Dunne approved the treatment on Tuesday.

Renton opened his eyes on Friday and had started to respond to voices and an MRI scan showed the seizures had not caused brain damage.

By a margin of 20 percent, a majority of Michigan voters supports legalization of small amounts of marijuana for adult recreational use, as two competing groups race to put the issue on the November 2016 ballot.

Support for legalization topped 56 percent in a statewide poll conducted June 9-11 by the Glengariff Group Inc. and released exclusively to The Detroit News and WDIV-TV.

Among 600 likely 2016 general election voters, opposition to ending Michigan's decades-old cannabis prohibition was just under 36 percent.

"The issue is in a position to win," said pollster Richard Czuba, president of the Chicago-based Glengariff Group. "This has a chance, but it's not an easy campaign."

In the days leading to his death, former Marine Cpl. Jason Simcakoski sent a text to his dad from the inpatient psychiatric ward at the Tomah, Wisconsin, Veterans Affairs hospital.

"I slept horrible last night," Simcakoski wrote Aug. 27, 2014. "I tossed and turned sweating … then I just stayed up. I couldn't take it. I'm worse now than before I came in."

Simcakoski had checked himself into the hospital for chronic drug misuse, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. He was taking 14 medications, including antipsychotics, muscle relaxers, antidepressants and tramadol — a powerful opioid painkiller prescribed to him by Tomah doctors.

By Lori Geary

ATLANTA — Gov. Nathan Deal told Channel 2’s Lori Geary, “Tomorrow is going to be a good day,” in an exclusive interview about the launch of Georgia’s medical marijuana cards.