A debate over medical marijuana legislation is getting acrimonious at the Iowa Capitol, and is even spilling over into a fight over anti-abortion legislation.

Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, opened the bidding on Monday by declaring that House Republican legislative leaders have a “moral obligation” to permit a vote on Senate File 484, which was approved earlier this session by the Senate.

The bill would allow Iowans with a range of health problems to obtain medical marijuana. Those conditions could include cancer, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other chronic and debilitating ailments.

Since 2012, when voters in Colorado and Washington approved the tax and sale of recreational marijuana, the cognitive dissonance of America's drug penalties has become even more absurd.

Where we once incarcerated people for growing and selling "just a plant," we're now incarcerating people for growing and selling "just a plant" that tens of millions of people can grow and sell legally.

Marijuana is legal only in certain states, and illegal under federal law. Still, it's worth asking what Congress would do with the thousands of pot offenders sent to federal prison each year if we repealed, or even just reformed, federal pot laws.

The year was 1978: The Bee Gees were on the radio; “Grease” made its debut; Jimmy Carter was doing something or other.

The smell of marijuana was also in the air — and the odds were you wouldn’t get in trouble for smoking it, at least in New York State.

New York made just 514 marijuana-related arrests that year, according to data unearthed by Muckrock. Compare that to 2013, when there were 31,613 marijuana arrests in the state.

Who is Happy wants users to (safely) tell the world how much they love pot, and thereby incite social change

With the app Who is Happy, a user who’s just elevated their day with cannabis can anonymously declare their joy by tapping a button and activating a green, one-kilometer-wide zone on a map, thereby sharing the approximate location of their happy place, so to speak.

App users can also see other “happy users” nearby, track their personal “happiness” habits, and see how the green joy stacks up in countries across the globe.

A committed anti-drugs activist has today attempted to prove that people could overdose from cannabis only to fail spectacularly when he just ate some chocolate before falling asleep laughing.

30-year-old Graham Yeorvil has been campaigning against the dangers of cannabis ever since he saw the film Cheech & Chong as a child and became traumatised by Chong’s face, the psychedelic colours and stoner comedy tropes.

“I’m committed to a world where people aren’t all burning the tips of their fingers with hash resin and watching Countdown in a relaxed stupor that doesn’t harm anyone,” he raged. “Did you know that four thirds of people who smoke cannabis can’t do even the most rudimentary of maths?”

A Pennsylvania Senate committee unanimously passed a bill, co-sponsored by Delaware County Sen. Daylin Leach, legalizing medical marijuana use.

“It’s time to stop relying on old fear tactics and fairy tales to sustain irrational policies and deny people what will help them,” Leach, D-17, of Upper Merion, said before committee members convened last Tuesday.

Once enacted, patients dealing with an array of mental and physical disorders, including children, are allowed to use medical marijuana for treatment. Cannabis dispensers and growers would sprout across the commonwealth to distribute doctor-prescribed marijuana.

Strict regulations and licensing fees would monitor the distribution and use of the narcotic. Smoking cannabis is still banned under this bill.

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.

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.