As medical marijuana becomes a reality in Illinois, residents should brace themselves to the problems seen in other states. Already, as reported last month, the marijuana industry is ignoring bans on advertising and launching a million-dollar marketing campaign to boost sales.

Advertising highly potent edible products, such as cookies and candy, that are appealing to youth sends the wrong message and leads young people to believe marijuana is harmless. The medical marijuana cottage industry lacks consumer safety protocols and has led to an increase in marijuana-related emergency room visits in other states.

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The political dysfunction in Springfield that has made it impossible to do something as basic as pass a state budget threatens to eviscerate an important pilot program for medical marijuana-even as potential patients continue to get in line.

But this is one logjam that could be broken quickly, and it should be.

Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration and the Legislature have shown a good-faith willingness to actually talk to each other about this one - - rare itself these days. For the sake of severely ill people suffering from chronic pain, we urge the governor and Legislature to keep on talking and reach a deal. They might even learn a thing or two about how to bridge the chasm, by giving and getting, on other more difficult issues.

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State House Working Group Sifts Through Claims.

The papers and opinions on medical marijuana kept coming across Rep. Aaron Kaufer's desk. Advocates and opponents wanted their chance to convince him. ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE Young marijuana plants stand under grow lamps at the Pioneer Production and Processing marijuana growing facility in Washington state. A total of 23 states and the District of Columbia allow medical marijuana programs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Mr. Kaufer, R-Kingston, was a member of a bi-partisan working group in the state House of Representatives looking at the issue of medical marijuana. After months of research and meetings, the group sent its conclusions to House Majority Leader Dave Reed in September. The conclusions gave guidelines for how a potential medical marijuana program could be implemented.

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There's plenty of speculation about our upcoming federal election, much of it frankly negative.

Politics is tough, especially when you weigh up the leaders and realize that finding someone who reflects all your values is almost impossible.

When the haranguing and arguing gets me down, I simply flip on a U.S. news channel, and take a good look at what our friends to the south are dealing with. It's like they're trying to elect a new village idiot, with a surfeit of contenders - by comparison, the Canadian election is a Care Bear Countdown.

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A week ago Friday, lawyers for Richard Kirk, a Denver man who is charged with the murder of his wife after eating a cannabis edible during a domestic disturbance in April 2014, changed his original plea from not guilty to not guilty by reason of insanity.

The pot made him do it. Had he not ingested a marijuana edible, he wouldn't have murdered his wife, Kristine, who was on the phone with 911 when she was shot.

It's a horrible story. Police reports indicate that the incident took place at home while their three sons were present. According to a police affidavit for a search warrant, Richard Kirk bought a Bubba Kush joint and a 100-milligram piece of Karma Kandy Orange Ginger taffy at a store on South Colorado Boulevard. He apparently ate some or all of the candy, came home, began arguing with his wife and acting irrationally, cutting his legs on broken glass, before unlocking the gun safe and shooting his wife in the head.

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Don't hesitate to medicate," call the spruikers in their white coats on Hollywood Boulevard and Venice Beach, California, where doctors licensed to prescribe medical marijuana do a brisk trade. Walk-ins merely have to turn up and describe some vague pain or high level of stress to bag their weed.

The rest of the world seems to be trying to ignore it, but slowly and surely the United States of America, until recently leading the charge in the war on drugs, is legalising marijuana possession. Twenty states, from Alaska to Vermont, have already decriminalised adult cultivation and use of cannabis.

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Anne Arundel County Executive Steve Schuh's position on medical cannabis is both disappointing and baffling.

And it cannot be permitted to stand.

Under Mr. Schuh's proposal, medical cannabis facilities, essentially the pharmacies to distribute medication to suffering patients, and all matters of manufacturing and distribution of this medication, would be made illegal in Anne Arundel County. As a member of the House of Delegates, Mr. Schuh voted against medical marijuana and to continue making possession of small amounts of marijuana an offense punishable by months in jail. In combination with his current stance, if Mr. Schuh has his way, citizens of Anne Arundel County, and across our state with debilitating diseases such as cancer, AIDS and glaucoma would continue to be forced to choose between obtaining helpful medication and being a criminal.

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Marijuana Dispenser Feels Villainized, Victimized by Justice System

The man who ran Winnipeg's only medical marijuana dispensary before being arrested earlier this month made his first court appearance Thursday and said police have seized "everything I had."

Your Medical Cannabis Services owner Glenn Price made a brief appearance without legal representation in a Winnipeg courtroom Thursday afternoon and, outside the Law Courts building, told reporters his best intentions of helping Winnipeggers has resulted in the justice system labelling him a villain.

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Storefront filled need, advocate says

DELTA 9 Bio-Tech, the only federally licensed medical-marijuana operation in Manitoba, says it has room for 200 new patients this month.

Others will turn to their own stash of pot. And as a last resort, there's always the street.

Police shut down Winnipeg's only storefront medical-pot dispensary, Your Medical Cannabis Headquarters, in a raid Tuesday. Owner Glenn Price faces drug charges.

The reality for many medical-marijuana users is that the options are limited, despite the optimistic rhetoric, one vocal advocate said.

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. Certain chemicals in marijuana may kill cancer cells, shrink tumors and prevent the formation of blood vessels that feed tumors.

That's the National Cancer Institute reporting findings from preclinical trials - the kind of research that typically leads to more in-depth testing.

But nearly a half-century ago the folks who write the checks for the cancer institute - the U.S. government - proclaimed marijuana a stoner-only drug and stamped it Schedule I, lumping it with heroin and LSD. That early war-on-drugs salvo cut the world's biggest funder out of medical marijuana research.

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Yeah, it's a cure-all. My buddy Jonah broke his elbow one time. He just smoked some weed. It still clicks, but it's cool. -Ben Stone in the film Knocked Up.

Maybe Ben Stone and his friend Jonah were onto something. A study by Israeli scientists recently published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research found broken bones healed faster and stronger in lab rats injected with cannabidiol (CBD), one of the non-psychoactive compounds found in marijuana. In the study, Tel Aviv University researchers injected CBD into rats with mid-femoral fractures and found the CBD made the bones stronger during and after healing. The study found the treatment was far less effective, however, when the rats were injected with a combination of CBD and THC, marijuana's psychoactive ingredient. Sorry, Ben.

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Medical cannabis >> I read in the UDJ's report (7/9) on the progress of Assemblyman Jim Wood's Marijuana Watershed Protection Act (AB 243) that he's basing his legislation on the estimate that "cultivators are making on a single plant, roughly $2500-4000."--Link that estimate or fantasy to Hezekiah Allen's "small medical cannabis farmer's" 1/4 acre under cultivation with 1000 plants and I get into an Ev Dirksen mood (he of "a billion here, a billion there" fame). We're talking about real money, here & now & in this county. (Itsall, 7/ 9&11, KZYX "The Cannabis Hour, 7/2-now on their Jukebox site.)--I hope Jane Futcher explores these numbers with supervisors McCowen and Woodhouse on "The Cannabis Hour" (TODAY, KZYX, 9 a.m.) and that Carol Brodsky has worked with the appropriate numbers in her 6-part UDJ series on the Pinoleville medical cannabis project.

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NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of articles covering the establishment of one of the first tribal cannabis farming projects in the United States. The Pinoleville Pomo Nation is providing readers of The Ukiah Daily Journal with a first-hand, exclusive look at the people, the processes and the philosophical underpinnings of this groundbreaking medical cannabis project.

Prana is a Sanskrit word roughly translated as "universal life force." It is the balancing and enhancement of the body's life force - - its prana, via the human endocannabinoid system that the medical cannabis products developed by United Cannabis Corporation are targeting.

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The Colorado Board of Health voted 6-2 - amid shouts, hisses and boos from a packed house - not to add post-traumatic stress disorder to the medical conditions that can be treated under the state's medical marijuana program.

The board voted Wednesday against the recommendation of the state's chief medical officer.

A dozen of the veterans who testified said cannabis has saved their lives. Many said drugs legally prescribed to them for PTSD at veterans clinics or by other doctors - antidepressants, antipsychotics, opioids and others - nearly killed them or robbed them of quality of life.

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Payette County Sheriff Chad Huff doesn't want to see his 72-bed jail filled with cannabis smokers.

Before July 1's legalization of recreational marijuana across the Snake River in Oregon, Huff spoke with his deputies. He encouraged them to cite and release violators of Idaho's marijuana possession law. Possession of up to 3 ounces of pot in Idaho is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

"I've basically asked that they not overload our jail with marijuana arrests," Huff said. "We're going to take more of a citation in the field (approach) vs. an actual physical arrest on marijuana charges."

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Amendment Called for Federal Studies to Gauge Medical Benefits, Risks

Medical marijuana is now sold in nearly half of all states, and even one red state has legalized it for recreational use. Veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are clamoring for access to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Loosening pot laws polls better in three swing states than any 2016 presidential candidate.

But House Republicans have so far declined to keep pace with shifting public opinion. They did so again late Wednesday, when a rare bipartisan pot proposal died a quiet death in the House that would have reclassified marijuana so that national laboratories could conduct "credible research on its safety and efficacy as a medical treatment."

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Last year, the federal government spent $5.2-million on medical marijuana for Canada's veterans. This year it will spend a lot more. Marijuana is a popular way to relieve the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and some veterans swear it saved their lives. Now consultation services designed to hook up vets with pot are spreading across the country. Marijuana for Trauma, founded by former Canadian Forces member Fabian Henry, has already helped hundreds of veterans in Atlantic Canada and is now expanding to Ontario. "I'm expecting thousands to be coming through the door in the coming years," he told the CBC.

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In 2012 Colorado voters legalized the sale and consumption of marijuana for recreational purposes. Some ski towns have embraced marijuana, treating it little differently than alcohol. But others have been biding their time.

To Vail and other towns, cannabis use by visitors and residents is an undeniable reality. But that doesn't mean they will allow stores selling THC-infused products.

Here in Canada recreational marijuana use is still illegal though access to medical marijuana has been completely reinvented. This has come with its own headache.

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Marijuana causes kids to kill themselves! It makes IQs drop!! If children accidentally eat edibles, they will be poisoned!!!

OK, now that I have your attention, I just want to say that none of the above is proven to be true. But Sheila Polk, Yavapai County attorney, and her anti-drug MATForce group has spread such propaganda in statewide programs and billboards.

As legalization spreads across this country, many of the early biased studies requiring a negative end result to obtain funding are being disproven. For instance, the assertion that marijuana impacts IQ has been shown untrue by a long-term Australian study and a recent Harvard University report. The Harvard study shows the impact of heavy marijuana use on learning and memory disappears within 28 days of stopping use. Heavy alcohol users, by comparison, have memory deficits for months, or even years.

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With so little scientific evidence that medical marijuana does what it is purported to do, it may be time to retire the medical model - at least in states like Colorado where marijuana can be legally purchased by any adult.

A recently released comprehensive review of dozens of clinical trials on medical marijuana found scant reliable evidence to support the drug's use for all but a handful of maladies.

Medical marijuana proponents argue the results don't tell the whole story because of federal barriers to legitimate research. That may be true. Both the state and feds should support and encourage more research so decisions around medical pot can be guided by high-quality evidence.

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