Curled on the floor retching, Tzvetanka Chiderova yelled for her mother to get the water pipe. Within minutes, the Montreal web-designer stopped gagging. The waves of nausea disappeared, she said.

“It was instantaneous,” said Chiderova, who turned to marijuana for medicinal purposes as a last resort while being treated for stomach cancer. Without it, she says, she could not have continued with life-saving chemotherapy.

As the US debates drug policy reforms and marijuana legalization, there's one aspect of the war on drugs that remains perplexingly contradictory: some of the most dangerous drugs in the US are legal.

In what’s being hailed as a world first, two groups, including the McGill University Health Centre, have launched a registry of medical cannabis users.

The new research database is aimed at collecting information on how cannabis is used and monitoring patient safety.

“Hopefully the database itself will provide enough meat for other researchers in Quebec and elsewhere to be able to ask questions of their own about effects on certain symptoms and side effect profiles,” said principal researcher Dr. Mark Ware, director of clinical research at the MUHC and associate professor at McGill University.

The idea is for researchers to be able to paint a better picture of who is using cannabis, why, and how much they are using, Ware said.

Hugh Hempel is a technology industry veteran turned health care entrepreneur. In this moving talk he discusses how medicinal cannabis has enriched the lives of his ailing 11 year-old daughters. This talk will challenge your views of medical marijuana. 

Hugh Hempel is a technology industry veteran turned healthcare entrepreneur. During his 30-year career in high technology, Hugh has held numerous senior management positions in many innovative and pioneering technology companies.

The medical marijuana business is booming in Los Lunas.

New Mexico has 23 medical marijuana dispensaries, according to the New Mexico Department of Health.  Eleven of them are in Bernalillo County, but to find one of the newest, you have to look south.

The new Natural RX in Los Lunas serves about 350 people.

“We felt like we could serve all of Valencia County, Belen, a little bit of Socorro,” said Trevor Reed, Natural RX’s executive director.

Reed, who runs another shop in Albuquerque, said a lot of his clients were driving up from the south. There was a demand for a shop in Valencia County, so he opened up shop there.

“A lot of veterans. We probably have 40 or so percent veterans. Oddly enough, a lot of seniors,” Reed said of his client base.

Dissonance between state law and federal law in the United States is leading to exorbitant tax bills for marijuana retailers.

While a legal activity in certain states, the sale of marijuana is still considered illegal under federal law.

States like Colorado that legalised the sale of marijuana have reported substantial tax revenue. Currently 23 states and one district have legalised marijuana for medical or recreational use, allowing anyone over the age of 21 to purchase retail marijuana from licensed shops.

However US federal law, including the federal tax system, remains at odds with permissive state laws. The incongruity is resulting in crippling tax bills for fledgling marijuana dispensaries.

When the new Governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper, was first elected to office, there was some cause for concern. The concern stemmed from Hickenlooper being openly anti-cannabis in his policy. While it was pretty clear that Colorado was experiencing success with the legalization movement at the time Hickenlooper took office, it was too late to backtrack, and it was anybody’s guess how this new arrangement would play out.

Chlorophyll collects light hitting the leaves of cannabis plants. The light is stored as energy, part of which is stored to use later, and part is used to split H20 into O2 and H, oxygen and hydrogen, respectively.

This process is how plants ‘exhale’ oxygen. Plants also absorb CO2 through the reaction in photosynthesis called carboxylation. This CO2 combines with free hydrogen to create carboxylic acids.

Hey, Cannabist!
I received a call for a job I applied for. Great, right? But should I disclose that I have a medical marijuana card during my interview? How do I find out the company’s drug-testing policy, if it’s not readily posted? By asking, aren’t I admitting that I partake? Can an employer legally ask if I do? –Masking Mota Manager

AUGUSTA, Maine — The state agency charged with running Maine’s medical marijuana system wants more oversight of the more than 1,700 people who cultivate small amounts of medicinal marijuana for patients.

The small cultivators, known as caregivers, can serve as many as five patients, and grow no more than six plants per patient. In most cases, they must register with the state.

But the Department of Health and Human Services has no means of enforcing rules that require caregivers to follow the medical marijuana law, said Ken Albert, a former DHHS regulator who now runs the Maine Center for Disease Control.