San Francisco's Sidecar company is offering its clientele a new service — the delivery of medical marijuana to customers' doors an hour after it is ordered.

The ride-hailing startup has partnered with Meadow, an on-demand marijuana delivery company, to provide the service, providing customers have a medical marijuana card prescribing cannabis use from their doctors. Only marijuana for medical purposes is legal in the state of California.

Then came the suicides. Brandon Murphree had just graduated from the only highschool in town, earning a full-ride scholarship to Jacksonville State University, right up the road. Murphree was handsome and popular. College was going to be a party.

But the party started early, then went sour. A few weeks after Murphree graduated, his parents started finding empty packets of Spice, or synthetic marijuana, scattered around the house. At the same time, their son began acting erratically. Normally happy and polite, he was suddenly sullen and rude. But the bizarre mood swings were only the beginning of the Murphrees’ midsummer nightmare.

Before he tried marijuana, he thought of trying suicide.

Heavy drinking hadn't helped. Nor had various pills prescribed by Veterans Affairs doctors. He was still angry, still depressed, still could not sleep.

But he found that marijuana helped. It took the anger and depression away. It took the sleeplessness away. Most of all, it took the 11-year-old boy away.

Pfc. Jared Hunter never knew the boy's name. He was just some Iraqi kid who liked to hang around the Army base outside Baghdad. “He didn't really speak English or nothing. He would just kind of follow us around and would point things out or tell us if there was somebody there who shouldn't have been.” The soldiers adopted him as a mascot. Hunter bought him a soccer ball.

By Keith Stroup, NORML Legal Counsel

Along with family picnics and public concerts, as a country we wear poppies and decorate the graves of the fallen on the last Monday in May to honor our soldiers who have died while serving in the military. It is a holiday to remember their great sacrifices to protect our country, our citizens, and our way of life.

As we pause to celebrate Memorial Day this year, it also gives us an occasion to consider the sacrifices made by all those who have served, including the tens of thousands of veterans living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other emotional problems resulting from their service to our country.

Twenty percent of veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan suffer from some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder. At present, no reliable pharmaceutical treatment exists for PTSD, but cannabis has been shown to provide relief. While some doctors in the US Department of Veterans Affairs turn a blind eye to their patients’ use of marijuana, others take a hard stand against it, and federal law makes it illegal to prescribe cannabis as a treatment. Meanwhile, an ambitious program in Canada helps veterans in that country get medical marijuana prescriptions and provides a communal setting for them to recover. Some soldiers credit it with saving their lives.

COLD WAR

The setting couldn’t be more ideal this mid-May morning in San Jose’s vast Hellyer Park as the 500 or so runners form a pack at the starting line. The temperature is in the low 60s and there’s a slight wind coming out of the west-northwest, really not much of a concern to the entrants.

At first glance, this appears to be just another race, maybe a 5K or a 10K.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, here in the northern part of the 354-acre park, amid nature trails and surrounded by rolling hills underneath blue skies dotted with clouds, the runners lined up are taking part in what could perhaps best be described as an ongoing journey to change perceptions and make history.

Everything from antacids to frozen veggies has a label detailing nutritional values and active ingredients, but when it comes to cannabis that information has been sorely lacking. How does one know how much to ingest or inhale if potency information is lacking?

Sage Analytics has an answer. The company, one of 162 exhibitors at last week's Marijuana Business Conference and Expo in Chicago, wants to bring pharmaceutical-level testing to the cannabis industry with the Luminary Profiler, a black box that measures potency on-site within seconds. Marijuana leaves are sprinkled or extracts are dripped onto a lens that uses spectroscopy "to instantly measure the potency of cannabis products on the molecular level," the company's literature says.

Before he tried marijuana, he thought of trying suicide.

Heavy drinking hadn't helped. Nor had various pills prescribed by Veterans Affairs doctors. He was still angry, still depressed, still could not sleep.

But he found that marijuana helped. It took the anger and depression away. It took the sleeplessness away. Most of all, it took the 11-year-old boy away.

Pfc. Jared Hunter never knew the boy's name. He was just some Iraqi kid who liked to hang around the Army base outside Baghdad. "He didn't really speak English or nothing. He would just kind of follow us around and would point things out or tell us if there was somebody there who shouldn't have been."

The soldiers adopted him as a mascot. Hunter bought him a soccer ball.