SALT LAKE CITY — District Attorney Sim Gill appeared alongside dozens of people who have admitted to using medical marijuana in a show of support for legislation that would legalize it in Utah.

“We need to start thinking about our public policy,” Gill said Wednesday.

A pair of bills are being introduced in the upcoming legislative session that would allow medical cannabis in Utah — but with different impacts. One bill by Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Saratoga Springs, was unveiled Wednesday ahead of a news conference by the Libertas Institute, a Libertarian-leaning think tank that is backing his bill. It would allow for medical cannabis with THC to be distributed through the Utah Department of Agriculture and the Utah Department of Health.

While her two young daughters were shopping with their father in South Weber, Utah, last Oct. 1, Enedina Stanger stayed behind in the parking lot. She had tried everything to help ease the pain from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome – the rare and potentially fatal genetic tissue disorder she suffers from – but nothing else worked. She lit up a marijuana cigarette. 

After she was finished, she rolled down the window of her van to let out the smoke. That's when somebody passing by called the police, claiming Enedina was smoking in front of her daughters, who by then had returned to the parking lot with their father, Mike Stanger. 

CANNABIS CULTURE – Now that Canada is poised to legalize cannabis for all adults, you may grow complacent about how much trouble marijuana can get you into in the United States.

Sure, we’ve got four states (Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) that have legalized some possession of weed, with another five states (Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada) likely to legalize in 2016. You can even possess pot in our nation’s capital, Washington DC.

(KUTV) Utah's legislative session begins on January 25 and ends on March 11. Two Utah lawmakers will introduce competing bills to legalize medicial marijuana.

One bill, sponsored by Sen. Mark Madsen (R, Saratoga Springs), proposes to legalize the use of edible cannabis and another form to be vaporized and consumed. Madsen says he will not propose smoking pot, because there are other side effects associated with that method. His bill will allow for the marijuana to be destributed only to those with certain medical ailments and in a very regulated and controlled environment.

Madsen believes nearly 100,000 Utahns could potentially benefit with this bills passage.

Next year promises to be action-packed in a variety of ways. Americans will be electing a new president, the make-up of Congress could once again shift, and more states are likely to be placing marijuana initiatives on their ballots to expand its use medically or recreationally (or both) as Ohio recently attempted with its November 2015 proposal.

Utah patients with conditions ranging from cancer pain to epilepsy would be able to take medicine with cannabidiol (CBD) — a marijuana extract — under a bill endorsed Wednesday by an interim legislative committee.

But the Health and Human Services Interim Committee backed away from the more ambitious medical marijuana plan proposed by Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Saratoga Springs. Madsen said he still plans to propose his legislation to the full Legislature.

The bills are likely to trigger lots of debate in the upcoming session as a host of sick Utahns plead for a medicine they believe will ease their pain. Some medical and law enforcement professionals, meanwhile, will urge caution, as they have in a series of committee meetings since spring.

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Utah State Legislature will consider two separate medical marijuana bills when it meets next year.

But cannabis advocates claim only one of those bills will actually do patients some good.

The legislature's interim Health and Human Services Committee met Wednesday to discuss a pair of bills. One is sponsored by Rep. Brad Daw, R-Orem; the other is sponsored by Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Saratoga Springs.

Rep. Daw said his bill would allow for cannabidoil to be used to treat a long list of diseases and conditions including cancer, HIV/AIDS, and epilepsy. He told the committee that prescribing doctors would provide research on its effectiveness to the legislature that would be considered when the law would come up for renewal.

A 3 year-old Utah boy, diagnosed with leukemia and told by doctors that he had mere days to live, is now alive and well not because he continued his chemotherapy, but because he obtained cannabis oil treatment instead. (1)

The family, fed up with the fact that the only treatment doctors could recommend was chemotherapy--even after little Landon Riddle kept vomiting dozens of times daily and refused to eat after two months of chemo--looked into cannabis oil treatment. After reading up about it online and researching the details, they traveled to Colorado where such a treatment is legal, to help Landon. (1)

Alaska

Qualifying conditions to become a medical marijuana patient in Alaska include:

• Cancer
• Glaucoma
• HIV/AIDS
• Cachexia (wasting syndrome)
• Nausea
• Muscle spasms
• Multiple sclerosis
• Pain
• Seizures

For a complete list of qualifying conditions and guidelines, please refer to Alaska’s application for medical marijuana registry

Arizona

Qualifying conditions to become a medical marijuana patient in Arizona include: