Marijuana legalization may not be a top priority of Congress or President Obama, but the American public is certainly doing its best to make it apparent that marijuana is an important issue.

We've seen a complete transformation of the American public's opinion of marijuana and even individual state law over the past two decades. What once was an illegal substance in all 50 states is now legal from the aspect of medical purposes in 23 states, and legal from a recreational, adult-use standpoint in four states.

Weedsta aims to notify all interested college students of the Weedsta Scholarship program. This program is designed to teach, encourage, enlighten, and give a better idea about medical marijuana-- that it's more than just an illegal drug.

The amount of scholarship is $1,000 and it'll be awarded on June 1st 2015.

Eligibility 
This scholarship program of Weedsta.com is open to any college or university student who:

A few years ago, when Modern Corp.’s Chief Operating Officer Gary E. Smith was recovering from open-heart surgery, he used the company’s 12-acre H2Gro facility to walk and rebuild his strength. Even then, Modern was contemplating a risky investment of converting the structure to a sophisticated, medical marijuana production center.

Now, with the New York State Compassionate Care Act signed into law, formal rules and regulations in place and an application process under way, Smith and Modern are vying to become one of five, licensed growing operations in the state.

Two years from now, the leafy corridors of the greenhouse may no longer house the towering tomato plants, instead nurturing the strong-stalked cannabis and their oil rich, medicinal trichomes.

When Madison McDaniel was 11, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called adrenocortical carcinoma. Various surgeries cost him his left adrenal gland, left kidney, appendix and a piece of his diaphragm. He also endured eight months of chemotherapy.

The young Madison seemed to be recovering, and he went back to playing Little League baseball. But the cancer metastasized to his brain when he was 13. He received several different types of radiation and had three brain surgeries. Though the cancer was beaten, the brain tumors and treatment left McDaniel with numbness and weakness on the right side of his body — as though he had suffered a stroke — and he lost vision in the right halves of both eyes.

Michigan voters legalized healthcare marijuana in 2010 but legislators nevertheless struggle to agree on terms for licensing and regulating healthcare marijuana dispensaries.

Watching police and policymakers contend with shifting public attitudes toward marijuana would be downright comical if the lives and liberty of so lots of persons weren't hanging in the balance.

The velocity of that shift has been breathtaking. As not too long ago as Bill Clinton's tenure as president, every single state in the union prohibited the sale of marijuana for any purpose. Currently, 32 states (and the District of Columbia) permit medical doctors to prescribe it for a wide assortment of health-related troubles.

Nearly 80 years since the United States effectively declared marijuana an illegal drug, support for legalization is spreading like a weed.

In the past three years, voters in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and the District of Columbia have voted to allow the recreational use of pot.

This year, Ohio voters will likely be asked to join the cannabis cavalcade.

That proposal, generated by a group calling itself ResponsibleOhio, is well into the signature-gathering process. Given its resources, estimated at more than $40 million, gathering signatures will likely not be its hardest task.

The ResponsibleOhio plan would allow adults 21 and older to possess an ounce of pot and grow up to four plants.

Marijuana-infused cookies sit on the packaging table at The Growing Kitchen in Boulder on Sept. 26, 2014. (Brennan Linsley, Associated Press file)

As a grandmother and long-time child advocate, I am appalled by the increasing availability of edible marijuana products to children.

Why? Because it is so easy for kids to ingest them accidentally.

Unmarked marijuana edibles are showing up everywhere, warns Smart Colorado, a youth advocacy group focused on protecting kids from marijuana.

Weren’t public schools supposed to benefit from taxes levied on marijuana sales? When and how will that happen?

As with most government-related questions, the answers are more complex than a yes or no. But several varieties of marijuana taxes are being collected, and schools are seeing some benefits. Those benefits are growing as the nascent industry expands and as more local governments open the doors to recreational marijuana outlets within their borders.

In fiscal year 2013-14, the state collected nearly $15 million in marijuana-related taxes and fees. The bulk of that money came from retail sales taxes and went into the state’s general fund, where it was mostly allocated to substance-abuse research, prevention and treatment.

Medical marijuana is working so well for celebrity chef Kerry Simon that weed “rewound time about four to six months back to where he was,” according to an upcoming magazine article.

The revelation will be detailed in the inaugural issue of the medical marijuana magazine, Elevate Nevada.

Simon isn’t cured of multiple system atrophy, a nerve degeneration that put Simon in a wheelchair and worse.

But a concentrated form of cannabis called Phoenix Tears is doing what other medicines aren’t, which is “shocking” the MSA community. Here are the money quotes in the story, as written by Beth Schwartz, formerly of the Review-Journal’s sister publication Luxury Las Vegas magazine.

With any Marijuana Business Insurance program, or any commercial insurance program for that matter, a lesson can be learned from the unfortunate fire of Seattle’s first legal marijuana farm, Sea of Green Farms. The lesson to be learned is always apply the ‘Golden Rules of Risk Management’ which are: