The time has come for the Canadian government to legalize marijuana.

That's the stance championed by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health through a policy statement on cannabis use released by the organization in the fall of 2014.

While the health risks associated with the use of cannabis products are impossible to ignore, CAMH says, the Toronto-based teaching hospital and research centre is calling for the legalization of the drug in Canada with strict regulations to control distribution.

Utah's Republican-controlled Senate rejected a bill Monday night allowing those with chronic and debilitating diseases to consume edible medical marijuana products.

Senators voted 15-14 against the proposal, citing concerns about unintended consequences and trouble with the language that they said needed to be studied later this year.

Saratoga Springs Republican Sen. Mark Madsen sponsored the bill, which would have forbidden the smoking of marijuana but allowed businesses to grow marijuana and sell pot-infused products such as brownies, candy and lozenges.

Matt Phillips said that when his daughter Lillie Reese was born two and a half years ago, everything seemed fine.

“She was a perfectly normal, perfectly healthy baby ... until she was four months old. She stopped smiling,” he said. “She stopped laughing. She stopped rolling over. She just stopped developing.”

Doctors performed numerous tests and found she was suffering from a type of epilepsy called infantile spasms.

“Basically, her brain was being scrambled, and she was having seizures. Twenty-four hours a day,” Phillips said.

“Her brain is structurally normal. Usually, when children have infantile spasms they find brain malformations or lesions or some sort of brain injury,” Phillips said. “But they don’t know why she is having them.”

Hot on the heels of landmark drug law reforms in NSW a struggling local gold prospector Capital Mining has struck a deal to reinvent itself as $25 million Australian-listed, Canada-based, medical marijuana company.

Broken Coast Cannabis will become the second legal weed business to trade on the Australian Securities Exchange.

The medical marijuana industry has boomed in North America and Europe over the past few years as more jurisdictions have legalised it, and is now a budding sector in Australia ahead of expectations for local law reform.  

"Our experience in Canada has shown us that being in the forefront of this new and fast-growing industry is key," Broken Coast Cannabis co-founder and general manager John Moeller said.

Grow Mechanics is a start-up cannabis cultivation and infused-products manufacturing company in Colorado Springs. We are committed to providing access to medical grade marijuana for responsible adult consumption, and to producing consistently potent, lab-tested marijuana and marijuana-infused products for our Colorado community. Through our company standards, practices, and quality products, we inspire ambition, expression, and consciousness throughout our Mechanics family.

At Grow Mechanics we are dedicated to pushing ourselves to be the best, and we are passionate about being a company that cares. We consistently place our energy and focus on:

Medical marijuana oil, produced in Colorado.(Photo: Associated Press file photo)

The Iowa Board of Pharmacy disappointed medical marijuana advocates again Monday.

Board members rebuffed a request that they recommend changing Iowa law’s classification of marijuana in a way that would make it easier to use the drug for medical purposes.

The board, which regulates medication sales, said it didn’t want to get involved now. “This is clearly a political issue at this point,” said board member James Miller, a Dubuque pharmacist.

An Australian mining firm has purchased a substantial stake in a Canadian medical cannabis business for cash and stock options.

Capital Mining said it paid $7 million in cash plus $25 million in stock options for 49% of Broken Coast Cannabis, one of 14 cultivators that hold a distribution license in Canada.

The mining company also will buy Cannan Growers in its entirety for $250,000 plus $1 million in stock options. Both marijuana companies are based in British Columbia.

ATLANTA  -- Sebastien and Annett Cotte don't plan to come home to Atlanta from Denver until after their 4-year-old son Jagger dies -- or the Georgia Legislature passes a bill making medicinal marijuana legal.

At 15 months, doctors told the Cottes their son wouldn't make it to 3, then that he'd never see 4. But he did, and a few months ago they moved to Colorado, where marijuana use is legal, and began to treat his seizures with cannabis oil, his dad said Monday. "He has fewer seizures, but we can't come home if we don't have a bill."

It is unlikely that Georgia legislators won't pass some kind of bill; the question is what it will allow. The General Assembly has two radically different bills in front of it; only one of them would make cannabis oil available soon.

An issue which continues to arise in each new state that legalizes or depenalizes marijuana is where those who wish to gather with others who enjoy smoking marijuana are legally permitted to do so.

This seems like an easy problem to solve — we’ve done it before. At the end of alcohol prohibition, the majority of states legalized and licensed bars and lounges where any adult could legally go to meet friends and enjoy their choice of legal alcohol drinks, and to spend some time with others who enjoy drinking.

Is Ohio, long considered the nation's leading political bellwether state, going to pot?

If some big-money investors, former sports stars and grassroots activists get their way, voters in November could make Ohio the first state to go directly from a total ban on marijuana to one allowing production and consumption of both medical and recreational marijuana.