The number of medical marijuana clinics in Minnesota will almost triple in the next few months.

That's by design. In fact, it's mandated by state law.

When Minnesota legalized medical cannabis last year, lawmakers set some of the most restrictive ground rules in the nation. Minnesota would decide who could grow the drug, who could buy it, and in what form it could be sold. The state also strictly limited where medical marijuana can be sold - just eight storefronts, scattered across the state.

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Google Considers Cannabis Dangerous, Unacceptable.

A Minnesota-based medical marijuana company says Google is blocking its attempts to advertise online.

Vireo, the parent company of Minnesota Medical Solutions, tried to take out a series of online ads in New York, where it operates four clinics and is one of several companies chosen by that state to grow and manufacture medical cannabis. Each time, Google rejected the ads, citing its policy against promoting "dangerous products or services."

On Monday, the company expanded its online advertising efforts to include the two Minnesota clinics operated by Minnesota Medical Solutions. Enrollment in Minnesota's medical cannabis program remains relatively low - 1,133 patients since legalization last July. But Vireo announced that it would also attempt to place "Minnesota-targeted Google ads to make it easier for Minnesota patients to learn about using our medicines."

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Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel

Tom Wainwright, PublicAffairs, 278 pages, $26.99.

In "Narconomics," Tom Wainwright of the Economist brings a fine and balanced analytical mind to some very good research, undertaken largely in northern Mexico. By looking at the drug trade as a business, Wainwright is able to reveal much about why it wreaks such havoc in Central and South America. The issue of violence is not a random by-product of gangster culture. It is central to the industry, Wainwright observes, as the only way "to enforce contractual agreements." To control or police a market like drugs, the cartel must be able to wield decisive violence or, at the very least, be able to project a credible threat of violence.

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Officials Ask Public to Identify Dealers, Users As Wave Hits Northern Minn.

A wave of heroin overdose deaths and hospitalizations across northern Minnesota prompted an urgent plea from authorities Wednesday for the public's help in identifying dealers and users in an effort to prevent further tragedies.

Seven people have died and more than a dozen have been hospitalized in the past few weeks after ingesting heroin that in many cases was made even deadlier by the presence of added narcotics such as morphine and fentanyl, authorities said at Wednesday's news conference in Bemidji, Minn.

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A Panel Heard Testimony on Pros and Cons of a New Approach.

An emotional crowd jammed a hearing Wednesday as state leaders tried sorting through a proposal to overhaul Minnesota's drug sentencing guidelines to decrease prison time and better distinguish addicts from potentially violent drug dealers.

Randy Anderson, a three-time felon in his 10th year of recovery from cocaine addiction, said the assumption that all dealers are dangerous is ludicrous. At the height of his addiction, he was using 10 to 14 grams a day and dealing drugs just to support his habit. When the police came for him, he was charged with possessing more than 1,000 grams of cocaine. While desperately addicted, he says he was never violent.

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Everybody agrees our prisons are filled with nonviolent drug users, especially pot smokers. But they aren't.

The consensus in favor of looser drug laws is just the latest political free lunch.

It seems that no presidential debate this year would be complete without denunciations of the drug laws, which, it is alleged, result in long prison terms for thousands of people, disproportionately African-Americans, who are guilty only of low-level offenses, thus fueling "mass incarceration."

At the last Republican debate, on Sept. 16, former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina charged that "two-thirds of the people in our prisons are there for nonviolent offenses, mostly drug-related."

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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Hemp has been legally harvested in Minnesota for the first time in more than 60 years.

A new state law passed this year allows researchers from the University of Minnesota to collect wild hemp. Researchers scoured the overgrown grounds at Fort Snelling Wednesday and cut some wild hemp.

Dr. George Weiblen has been studying hemp for more than a decade. Weiblen says he has not been able to collect wild cannabis seed until now and had to import it from the Netherlands and Canada.

Weiblen says he and other researchers hope to create new varieties with an aim toward reviving a domestic hemp industry in the U.S. He says that unlike traditional marijuana, the wild hemp has very little THC, the psychoactive compound.

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I applaud Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger and the Star Tribune Editorial Board for highlighting the need to address the alarming rates of addiction to and fatal overdose of prescription painkillers and heroin ("Minnesota needs state strategy to fight pain pill, heroin addiction," Aug. 24, and "Pain pill abuses are aired at conference," Aug. 26). While it will not be a panacea, emerging data suggest that modifying Minnesota's medical cannabis program to allow intractable pain patients to legally use medical cannabis can help ("State weighs medical cannabis for chronic pain," Aug. 26).

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Minnesota certainly does need a new strategy to fight opioid addiction ("Closing the gateway that leads to heroin," editorial, Aug. 25). Unfortunately, Gov. Mark Dayton bowed to the pressure of law enforcement lobbyists and supported a limited medicinal cannabis law that excluded intractable pain. Studies have found that states with medical marijuana laws have fewer deaths from opioid overdoses than those without. Other studies have shown that cannabis has the potential to manage pain symptoms and at least reduce the dosage of opioids needed to manage severe pain. The risks of opioids include addiction and death from overdose. Cannabis is a much safer alternative. It has a much lower risk for dependence, and there has yet to be a documented death from overdose.

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Either Americans are the most evil people on Earth or there's something terribly wrong with their criminal-justice system. We hope it's the latter. With less than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States has nearly 25 percent of the world's prisoners. The U.S. locks people up at a rate nearly five times the world's average. Since 1980, its inmate population has more that quadrupled.

How to explain? First, there's the sad reality that U.S. crime rates, despite their general decline in recent years, are still far higher than those of other advanced democracies - stoked, perhaps, by the nation's sharp social disparities and the easy access to firearms. Then there's the sad reality that jails and prisons, rather than hospitals, are being used to warehouse the mentally ill. An estimated 16 percent of the nation's inmate population suffers a mental disorder.

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Patients Struggle to Find Doctors Willing to Help.

One month after legalization, there are still more doctors than patients enrolled in Minnesota's medical marijuana program. As of Friday morning, there were 250 patients and 334 health care practitioners enrolled in the Health Department's Office of Medical Cannabis.

Even so, patients eligible for the program have struggled to find doctors willing to help them enroll. Those who do make it into the program are facing rising prices for a medication that's not covered by any insurance.

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State Officials Expect Enrollment to Keep Growing; 276 Patients Are Already Certified.

Minnesota's nascent medical marijuana program saw its greatest weekly jump in participants with growth of 50 percent in the first full week of July.

As of Friday, 147 patients had paid their fees, completed their paperwork and were eligible to participate in the program. That was up from the 98 patients approved at the end of the month-long enrollment leading up to the July 1 legalization date.

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(AP) - This week, Minnesota will be the latest state to enter the world of medical marijuana. Patients and advocates already have changes in mind, and clinics don't start selling the medicine until Wednesday.

The state has some of the tightest restrictions in the country.

Smoking the plant is banned, and only oils and pills are allowed. The drugs are being sold in only eight locations.

Maren Schroeder helped her mother, Kathy Schroeder, get signed up for access in the hope of treating multiple sclerosis and glaucoma. She says the issues have been worse than she had anticipated.

Some advocates hope the state will add more dispensaries and allow people suffering chronic pain to get medical marijuana.

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Lifting the prohibition might make sense, but it's not the issue. The Constitution is.

As surely as presidential candidates promise to change Washington, nominees for attorney general pledge to uphold the law, not personal policy preferences. Loretta Lynch, now the 83rd attorney general of the United States, was no different when she made her case to Congress in January. Trying to distinguish herself from her lightning rod of a predecessor, Eric H. Holder Jr., she said the law would be her "lodestar."

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(AP) - There will be no baggies of pot awaiting patients this week when Minnesota joins 21 other states in offering medical marijuana. Instead, the nation's latest medical marijuana program is a world of pill bottles and vials of marijuana-infused oil.

For the qualifying patients seeking relief from pain, medical marijuana advocates and some lawmakers, Wednesday isn't the finish line, but the first step. The state's restrictive approach, unseen in the industry, is expected to mean high costs, long drives and reluctant doctors.

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Regarding Ed Gogek's June 8 commentary "Why docs don't favor medical pot": While there have been studies showing that marijuana can shrink cancerous tumors, medical marijuana is essentially a palliative drug. If a doctor recommends marijuana to a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy and it helps the patient feel better, it's working. Medical marijuana is a quality-of-life decision best left to patients and their doctors. Drug warriors waging war on noncorporate drugs contend that organic marijuana is not an effective health intervention. Their prescribed intervention for medical-marijuana patients is handcuffs, jail cells and criminal records. This heavy-handed approach suggests that drug warriors should not be dictating health care decisions.

Robert Sharpe, Arlington, Va.

The writer is a policy analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy.

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What is it with these doctors? They can't prescribe medical marijuana because it might, what... turn them into addicts or heaven forbid, kill them ("Patients scramble for pot doctors," June 11)? It bothers me that they've justified their actions on that basis when, really, all they're thinking about is their own professional safety.

I watched my mother die of ALS over the course of a year, and I would have moved heaven and earth (or to Colorado) if there was the slightest chance something might ease her suffering. No human should have to suffer like that when there is something that might ease their pain. Shame on all of you doctors for hiding behind the veil of unknown risk when the known risk is a horrifying, painful death.

Laurel DeLaittre, Shorewood

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Legalization Makes It Easier for Teens to Get It, and We Have Other Drug Options.

Legislatures across the country are legalizing medical marijuana, but the nation's physicians aren't requesting these laws. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Society of Addiction Medicine are both against medical marijuana laws. The American Medical Association doesn't support them either.

Groups representing patients aren't behind these laws. The American Cancer Society hasn't demanded them, and the Glaucoma Foundation even warns patients against using the drug.

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In an Otsego greenhouse, Minnesota's first medical cannabis crop is in bloom.

Young marijuana plants, fuzzy and pungent, stretched toward the skylights as Dr. Kyle Kingsley threaded between the plant beds, leading state media on a tour of the Minnesota Medical Solutions facility that will supply half of Minnesota's legal medical marijuana.

"You'll see this place is pretty Spartan," Kingsley said, walking past bare white walls, concrete floors, and banks of monitors scanning the secure facility and its perimeter. There's a faint skunky smell in the air that hits visitors as soon as they reach the first of the three locked doors that lead into the building. "We put our focus on science and medicine," Kingsley continued, walking among rows of seedlings and plants. More than 4,000 plants and dozens of cannabis strains fill the greenhouses and spill out into the atriums.

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Now that medical marijuana is legal in Minnesota and disbursement is set to begin July 1, employers should review their policies regarding such workplace procedures as drug testing and the Americans With Disabilities Act to ensure they protect the business, as well as the employee.

Minnesota's law authorizes the use of medical marijuana for patients suffering from several medical conditions including glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, certain cancers, seizure disorders, Crohn's disease and illnesses causing severe and persistent muscle spasms. Individuals eligible for the medication are required to enroll in a statewide registry.

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