Even after the drive to get medical marijuana legalized in Florida fell short by two percentage points in voting, there still remains a strong backing by many Floridians for medicinal weed to be made legal. But while groups like United for Care are pushing to get medical marijuana back on the ballot in 2016, it's still very much illegal to possess it, grow it, and sell it — even while some still think there are exceptions. 

Yet that's not stopping medical marijuana advocates and experts from hitting up Palm Beach County this week to discuss medicinal cannabis and its many benefits.  

In a surprising Wednesday morning editorial, Costa Rica’s normally conservative Spanish-language daily La Nación advocates for the legalization of medical marijuana.

The editorial, titled “Cannabis as Treatment,” notes that a large number of Costa Ricans – perhaps hundreds or thousands, it claims – use marijuana to treat a  range of health issues in this Central American country of 4.8 million, and that number is growing.

La Nación writes:

The shuttered marijuana vapour lounge in Vanier vows to reopen as early as this week after the city slapped it with a cease-and-desist order and a hefty fine last Friday.

On its Facebook page, BuzzOn says it is “optimistic” it can reopen its doors to the public by Friday after speaking with a lawyer about rezoning the building.

City officials visited the Montreal Road lounge to serve a notice that BuzzOn is in violation of the building code and must be rezoned as a place of assembly.

Owner Wayne Robillard accused the city of using a “strong-arm tactic” to shut the place down for good.

The city said in a statement the cease-and-desist papers were issued from a safety perspective to keep the business in line with building code requirements.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf officially announced his support for decriminalizing marijuana during an interview Tuesday.

Speaking with Pittsburgh television station WPXI, Wolf said that he thought decriminalization had several benefits, noting the criminal justice dilemma that the legal status of the drug creates:

“I believe, for a number of reasons, that we ought to decriminalize marijuana use. I think our prisons are over-crowded as a result of people going to jail for reasons that, you know, we break up families for reasons that we shouldn’t.

WATERTOWN–Medical marijuana is an up and coming industry in Connecticut.

Legalized three years ago, licensed facilities grow it and dispensaries sell the medicine to patients, all under heavy regulation by the Department of Consumer Protection.

On of the facilities licensed to produce medical marijuana, Theraplant, is located in a highly secure facility meant to protect the budding industry.

“We took painstaking steps to design this building to be as safe and secure as possible and grow the best medicine possible,” said Ruby.

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Supporters of medical marijuana in South Carolina rallied at the Statehouse Wednesday, telling their stories of how they've already been helped by the plant and its extracts. A bill now in the House and a similar one in the Senate would make medical marijuana legal in the state for a number of conditions, including cancer, glaucoma, seizures, autism, and post traumatic stress disorder.

Oils and extracts, vaporizers, grow lights and joint rollers filled a marijuana convention in Chicago on Wednesday — without a puff of pot in the air or a single leaf of the drug yet sold legally in Illinois.

More than 2,000 people attended the Marijuana Business Conference & Expo, hoping to cash in on a business that is forecast by one industry-backed market research group to grow to $11 billion in annual sales nationwide by 2019,.

When there is talk of mafia-like structures on European soil, some people may tend to think more of Italy rather than Germany. The fact is, however, that we have a large, highly active black market for illegal drugs here in Germany, one with the closest of ties to organised crime. And we have not succeeded in combatting this effectively with bans. The reason is that it is not possible to ban a black market. A black market is the consequence of a ban. Our ban on the possession and purchase of cannabis – in other words, the demand – thus has more of a proxy effect than a supplementary one, and the stamp of illegal behaviour, with the risks this entails, is transferred to the consumers. This appears to be a form of displacement activity – as consumption itself is allowed in principle.

It’s true– this is not some one-off survey conducted by amateurs. This research was completed by Dr. Melanie Creagan Dreher PhD, RN FAAN whom served as the dean for four prestigious nursing schools, received a Bachelors of Science from Long Island University as well as a Masters and Doctorate in Anthropology from Columbia University and Teachers College.