By Kathleen Ronayne, Associated Press | Associated Press – 

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- For 20 years, Frank Paine has suffered from chronic back pain that caused him to retire early in 2009 and now makes it hard for him to walk long distances.

He's tried numerous medications, physical therapy and acupuncture. None of it has worked, but he and his doctor see another possible source of relief: Medical marijuana.

The state legalized medical marijuana in 2013, but Paine still has no idea whether it's a treatment that will work. He won't use it until he can access it legally and that's still not possible, a lag that has frustrated potential patients.

In the United States, about one in ten people live with some form of arthritis. Its damage to these 30 million sufferers makes this disease the number one cause of disability.

Those who think the treatment of arthritis, especially the rheumatoid variety, with cannabis is new age medicine should think again. As far back as 2,000 B.C., four thousand years ago, the Chinese called cannabis a treatment that “undoes rheumatism.”

Kansas mother Shona Banda is unable to see her child and faces decades in prison after authorities confiscated marijuana from her Garden City home in March.

On Friday, the state of Kansas charged Banda with “five felony counts of possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute, manufacturing Tetrahydrocannabinol, an oil extracted from marijuana, two counts of possession of drug paraphernalia and one count of child endangerment,” the Washington Post reports.

Need for Research on Drug Providing Hope for People with Epilepsy

As the news of the positive outcomes for some children with uncontrollable epilepsy who have been given a marijuana strain rich in cannabidiol (CBD) - the major non-psychoactive ingredient in marijuana - has spread, desperate parents of children with epilepsy have been clamoring for more information and a chance for their children to try the treatment.

An Australian pharmaceutical company, the most recent "pot stock" to trade on the ASX, has become one of the first local players to be granted a license to grow marijuana for medicinal purposes. 

MGC Pharmaceuticals, which is operated out of Israel, will be allowed to grow, process, import and export cannabis from Slovenia, where the government has legalised the practice.

Fellow Australian cannabis producer, AusCann, secured permission to grow and export marijuana on Norfolk Island in May. The difference between the two producers is MGC hopes to produce a product for the cosmetic industry whereas AusCann is targetting pain relief. 

One-quarter of patients with multiple sclerosis report having used cannabis therapeutically and nearly one out of six (16 percent) currently use it to treat symptoms of the disease, according to survey data commissioned by the North American Research Committee on MS.

Over 5,600 MS patients participated in the survey, the results of which were presented last week at the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Center 2015 Annual Meeting.

Most subjects who had tried marijuana said it mitigated disease symptoms, such as spasticity or pain. Only five percent of patients surveyed said that cannabis said it did not provide some level of relief.

In a new exclusive interview with Truth in Media, medical cannabis oil activist and Crohn's disease survivor Shona Banda, whose story went viral earlier this year when her home was raided by police and her 11-year-old son was seized by the Kansas Department for Children and Families after her son discussed facts about his mother's medical marijuana treatment during a public school anti-drug presentation, speaks out about the five criminal charges that are now being filed against her.

ALBANY – Patients and state lawmakers on Tuesday made a final push for New York to pass a bill that would provide emergency access to medical marijuana for ill patients.

New Yorkers with severe illnesses and legislators urged the Legislature to pass the bill and for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to sign it as the state Department of Health considers medical marijuana growers and hopes to have a statewide distribution system in place by Jan. 1.

Medical researchers are beginning to study whether the hype surrounding a chemical in marijuana matches reality.

Proponents of cannabidiol largely believe that the chemical provides many of marijuana's therapeutic characteristics. And unlike tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, it doesn't get the user high.

But in the decades since its discovery cannabidiol remained difficult to study despite reports that it could improve a wide range of conditions, including epilepsy, schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease.

As a Schedule 1 drug, scientists need approval from several federal regulators to conduct research. As a result, little has changed since the chemist who discovered THC reported that cannabidiol reduced seizures in seven of eight epilepsy patients in a 1980 study.

Balking at the concept of calling any use of marijuana “medical” delegates to the American Medical Association’s annual meeting in Chicago, IL, today nevertheless agreed that physicians who dispense it for therapeutic reasons should not be prosecuted.

Voting on a resolution originally entitled “Immunity from Federal Prosecution for Marijuana Prescribing” the delegates agreed to remove the term “medical marijuana” from the text of the resolution and to substitute “cannabis”. They also changed the word “prescribing” in favor of language that described the physician as recommending the substance to a patient.

“Marijuana is not recognized as medicine by the FDA or the AMA,” said Stuart Gitlow, MD, in pushing for the wording change.