Michigan voters legalized medical marijuana in 2010 but legislators still struggle to agree on terms for licensing and regulating medical marijuana dispensaries.(Photo: Ed Andrieski, Associated Press)

Medical marijuana is back on agendas in Lansing.

The Michigan House Judiciary Committee is to begin new hearings today for two medical-marijuana bills. Both passed the House overwhelmingly last year, then hit roadblocks in the lame-duck session of the state Senate last fall, when statewide police groups lobbied hard against them.

The bills would allow two big additions to Michigan's medical-marijuana landscape:

30 years of marijuana being illegal, India now for Marijuana Legalisation Movement

With several countries in the world, including Uruguay and some states in the USA, legalising marijuana (cannabis), the movement has finally found a foothold in India. The first-ever conference in India for the legalisation of Marijuana will be held in Bengaluru on May 10, although the venue is yet to be finalised.

The Great Indian Legalisation Movement will organise Medical Cannabis Conferences across four cities - Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai and Delhi on consecutive weekends in May. The seating has been limited to 200 people for the Bengaluru conference.

Labour TD Aodhán Ó Ríordáin is the latest Irish politician to admit using drugs but the only one who didn't break the law to do so. Speaking after his new role of Minister of State with responsibility for Drug Strategy was added to his portfolio, he said he dabbled with drugs once while a student.

"I didn't break the law. I was a student, I was in Amsterdam, it was the weekend. I am not a smoker. I do what most students do," he said.

Mr Ó Ríordáin joins a number of other high-profile politicians who have also conceded to using drugs, namely cannabis. Back in 2007, then Finance Minister Brian Cowen was dubbed "Biffo Spliffo" after he admitted using the drug during his student days.

A Moncton-based medical marijuana company that went public last summer has secured $5 million in credit, which it plans to use to accelerate its growth strategy.

OrganiGram says demand for its medical marijuana is growing. (CBC)

OrganiGram Holdings Inc. has experienced a "significant increase" in patient registrations over the past few months and recently completed four new grow rooms, president Roger Rogers said in a statement on Wednesday.

The new rooms are expected to be in operation by the end of June, pending inspection by Health Canada, he said.

"We are very pleased to have negotiated a non-dilutive form of financing," said Rogers, referring to two letters of interest that will provide long-term debt totalling $5 million.

LAS VEGAS, April 29, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hemp, Inc. (OTC:HEMP), processor, manufacturer and marketer, in the industrial hemp industry, is pleased to update its shareholders on the progress of its decortication facility in Spring Hope, North Carolina. Thus far, Hemp, Inc.

'People make mistakes,' says other pot shop owner with criminal record

With the City of Vancouver looking at new rules to regulate the booming retail marijuana business, one of the hurdles some pot shops will face is police background checks of their operators. 

CBC decided to do its own background checks and quickly found some local operators have had serious run-ins with the law, including instances not involving the marijuana business. In one case, two of the operators of the Sea to Sky Alternative Healing Society — well aware their police involvement could back to haunt them — have removed themselves as directors of the pot dispensary at least on paper. 

They say they welcome Vancouver's move toward regulation of the city's 80-plus pot dispensaries. 

Need to know how to tell the difference between a male and female marijuana plant? Its quite easy usually between five days and two weeks into flowering you will begin to see a pair of tubular nodes.

Hopefully they will have white hairs protruding from them as this denotes a female plant. these little hairs are known as pistils, and they are the first sign that your plant is flowering, and is female. Were as male plants have the “ball on a stick” appearance. They are obviously quite different from the flowering female pistils.

Latin America's first medical marijuana farm has taken root in a dusty yard at a secret location in Chile's capital, with the blessing of a prominent right-wing official and high hopes the idea could sprout elsewhere in the socially conservative nation.

A debut crop of around 100 kilos (221 lbs) of prime cannabis bud - with a value of $2 million on the street - was harvested this month from the farm in La Florida, a middle-class Santiago neighborhood, and sent to a laboratory for processing.

The project is the brainchild of a curious alliance between Rodolfo Carter, a right-wing municipal mayor with progressive tendencies, and a privately-funded foundation ran by Ana Maria Gazmuri, a 1980s TV soap star who is now an advocate for alternative "holistic" medicine.

Marijuana has come a long way since its hippy smoking image beloved by the mainstream media over the last few decades.Awareness of its medical properties have slowly emerged over that time to challenge the preconceptions and help to form a new image for the plant.

Yes we have to be aware of the dangers of the misuse of Marijuana but also need to keep a clear head when considering the immense benefits in can bring to many people.

A bill that that would allow epilepsy patients in Texas to use medicinal oils containing a therapeutic component found in marijuana was considered by state lawmakers in an emotional hearing on Tuesday.

House Bill 892 would legalize oils containing CBD, a non-euphoric component of marijuana known to treat epilepsy and other chronic medical conditions. By 2018, the measure would allow the state to regulate and distribute the oils to epilepsy patients whose symptoms have not responded to federally approved medication. The measure was left pending by the House Committee on Public Health.