The Massachusetts Department of Public Health announced changes to the Commonwealth’s Medical Marijuana Dispensary program in a Wednesday press release, including the requirement for all patients to obtain an electronic certification from a physician and register for the Medical Use of Marijuana Program.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health announced changes to the state’s Medical Marijuana Dispensary program Wednesday, which will license Registered Marijuana Dispensaries similar to the licensing of other healthcare facilities. 

Additionally, the release stated, this new process will grant licenses to registered marijuana dispensaries similarly to the way in which they grant licenses to pharmacies.

EUGENE, Ore. - With just days left to file income taxes, Oregon Representative Earl Blumenauer and Senator Ron Wyden introduced legislation that would allow marijuana businesses to take deductions as long as they are following state laws.

Wyden has also proposed a tax reform plan that would make filing taxes easier and create incentives for local businesses.

“We really have a one page form, just over 30 lines long and if we go to something like that - Oregonians are going to be able to get their April back," Wyden said.

He said these changes would reflect the will of Oregon voters and provide some certainty for small businesses.

He hopes to move forward with these tax changes in the upcoming months.

In 2011, the only place you could buy a pound of pot online was Silk Road, an illegal marketplace labeled by the media as the “Amazon of drugs.”

In 2015, there’s a website run by veteran commodity traders where Colorado growers and retailers can trade cannabis online – legally.

The Denver-based company Amercanex launched its online marketplace last summer, and it has plans to expand outside of Colorado by the end of 2015.

Retired Silicon Valley engineer Angelo Mallol, 56, turned out Sunday for a seminar on how to start a small business – in the pot trade.

He asked questions as instructor Gerry Bedore of the Cannabis Career Institute spoke about emerging opportunities for entrepreneurs wanting to enter California’s medical marijuana market and cash in on a likely 2016 state ballot initiative to legalize recreational pot use.

The Cannabis Career Institute, founded by a Los Angeles marijuana activist and pot deliveryman known as “The Cannabis Warrior,” held a daylong Sacramento program on how to open cannabis businesses, from niche bakeries and organic gardens to marijuana distribution services.

The cannabis round table discussion is being hosted by the Social Development Department this week.

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s first ever conference on the use of cannabis as a medicine on Thursday heard that up to four million people were estimated to be using the drug in southern Africa, and while millions are spent to eradicate it, these efforts yield little results and often disadvantaged the poor.

The cannabis round table discussion was being hosted by the Social Development Department in Benoni this week and brought together doctors, lawyers, religious leaders and NGOs to discuss the viability of partial legalisation.

Now that medical marijuana is legal in Minnesota and disbursement is set to begin July 1, employers should review their policies regarding such workplace procedures as drug testing and the Americans With Disabilities Act to ensure they protect the business, as well as the employee.

Minnesota’s law authorizes the use of medical marijuana for patients suffering from several medical conditions including glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, certain cancers, seizure disorders, Crohn’s disease and illnesses causing severe and persistent muscle spasms. Individuals eligible for the medication are required to enroll in a statewide registry.

The French Quarter in New Orleans could be buzzing with more than jazz and joie de vivre if a Baton Rouge lawmaker gets his way.
(Photo courtesy of the Louisiana Office of Tourism)

ATLANTA — Patients who have to go out of state to get cannabis oil say they will face risks and hurdles even after medical marijuana becomes legal in Georgia on Thursday.

Gov. Nathan Deal will sign a law that makes it legal to possess up to 20 ounces of cannabis oil in Georgia. But patients who need the oil still have to go out of state to get it, because it remains illegal to produce at home.

That means families have to travel out-of-state to get the oil, and it is unclear whether the federal government will tolerate that.

DES MOINES — Everyone knows that politics makes strange bedfellows.

A pair of Linn County legislators has — unintentionally — taken that to a new level: They call the same house home.

But not at the same time.

Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, and Rep. Art Staed, D-Cedar Rapids, both call — or have called — 2905 Alleghany Dr. NE home.

Paulsen grew up there from the late 1960s to 1983 when he left to attend the University of Iowa. Sixteen years later, Staed and his wife, Susan, bought the house and reared their children there.

“I wasn’t involved in politics back then,” Staed says. “I didn’t know Kraig at that time.”

Smaller industrial buildings that are home to warehouses and distribution centers might lack gee-whiz architectural appeal, and they're often in nondescript parts of town where restaurants and other amenities are few and far between.

But they're perfect for the medical marijuana industry, whose appetite for smaller industrial buildings has made them a hot commodity.

Unlike Denver and Pueblo, Colorado Springs and El Paso County have banned recreational marijuana grow operations and sales, but they allow medical marijuana sales, cultivation and manufacturing.