It Took Four Years to Obtain Approval for One Pain Study.

Within a year, patients will be lining up to buy medical marijuana legally in Minnesota.

But for the state's scientists, it's still a struggle to do basic research into the plant's medicinal properties.

Kalpna Gupta, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota, spent four years entangled in federal paperwork before winning approval to study whether vaporized cannabis was an effective pain relief treatment for patients with sickle cell disease. The research itself will take another four years.

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Minnesota business owners say the inability of some job candidates to pass a simple drug test adds an extra burden to running a factory.

Erick Ajax spent years designing a program that trains students to use the hulking machinery inside his Fridley metal stamping plant. But a troubling, pervasive trend is preventing some from ever making it to the factory floor: drug use.

"In 2007, I lost 10 percent of my workforce to methamphetamine. That was just heartbreaking. It's clearly an issue and an ongoing challenge," said Ajax, who now drug tests all new hires and randomly tests his 60-person staff.

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Elk River may add a new weapon to the local war on drugs.

Funding for a new drug task force detective is in the city's preliminary budget for 2015.

Council members heard more about the position during a budget work session Monday and expressed some support for it. But a final decision won't be made until the budget is finalized later this year.

Under the plan, the Elk River Police Department would assign an existing officer to the Sherburne County Drug Task Force as a detective, and hire a new entry-level officer to fill that vacated position. Total cost is estimated at $67,000 to $77,000.

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A path Jessica Hauser never expected to be traveling is moving her and her family toward a crossroads.

The journey began when the Woodbury woman's son, Wyatt, was diagnosed seven months into his young life with an epileptic condition called infantile spasms.

As Hauser and her husband Jeremy learned over time, the condition would cause Wyatt to have about 200 seizures a day.

"It's horrible," Jessica said of watching her son experience the seizures. "I wouldn't wish this upon anyone."

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ST. PAUL -- Dr. Marshall Brinton saw the headlines after Minnesota passed a medical marijuana law, looked around at the equipment in his old veterinary laboratory and thought, "Yeah, I could do that."

A retired veterinarian in Willmar, Brinton hopes to convert the lab where he once made vaccines for animals into one of Minnesota's two medical marijuana production facilities.

After the long slog to legalize medical marijuana, the state's real work has begun to get the unconventional medicine in severely ill patients' hands by this time next year. Next steps range from the mundane, such as securing office space, to integral pieces, such as building a computer system to register patients and track their medication, hiring a research director to help determine dosages and placing eight dispensaries across Minnesota.

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WILLMAR -- The Willmar Planning Commission will hold a public hearing at 7:05 p.m. Wednesday to consider a conditional use permit requested by retired veterinarian Dr. Marshall Brinton to allow a medical marijuana production lab/dispensary.

Brinton has requested the permit to operate the production lab/dispensary in laboratory facilities he owns at 208 Lakeland Dr. S.E.

The hearing will be held in the meeting room at the Willmar Fire Station, 515 Second St. S.E.

City Planner Megan DeSchepper said the conditional use permit is required because medical marijuana production is not listed as a land use in any section of the city zoning ordinance.

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Minnesota's new medical marijuana law is intentionally and appropriately

narrow. Those who truly need the beneficial compounds in cannabis will be able to get it, not by smoking but by ingesting pills or liquid, just like other medications. The law is written tightly

enough to discourage the abuse and problems seen in other states, especially those that have legalized marijuana for recreational use.

That's because "disquieting new trends and statistics are proving (marijuana's) unique dangers for those most vulnerable to its effects: children," Dr. David Sack, an expert in addiction psychiatry, especially among adolescents and young adults, wrote in a commentary published last week by the Los Angeles Times.

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Medical marijuana is coming to Minnesota next summer.

Rather than joints or other illicit forms of the street drug, medical pot will be made into oils, vapors or pills by two Minnesota manufacturers to be chosen by the state yet this year.

Those two manufacturers will set up eight distribution centers, or dispensaries, between them, spread geographically across the state to make patient access easier, said Michael Schommer, communications director with the Minnesota Department of Health.

To receive the drugs, patients must be certified as having one of several medical conditions outlined in new legislation created by the Minnesota Legislature, and signed into law by Gov. Mark Dayton.

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The November ballot will have a handful of candidates who hope to legalize recreational marijuana in Minnesota.

In November, in a number of high-profile political races, voters will be able to choose between a Democrat, a Republican and a bunch of candidates who want to legalize marijuana for everyone.

Take the contest for governor. Don't expect Gov. Mark Dayton, or any of his potential Republican opponents, to back a law that would make Minnesota like Colorado or Washington, the two states where citizens in 2012 voted to decriminalize pot. It's still the rare prominent Democrat or Republican politician who will get behind a move like that, despite the growing number of states including Minnesota that now have medical marijuana laws.

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Independence Party congressional candidate John Denney wants to legalize marijuana and has other libertarian views.

It's one of many libertarian stances taken by Denney, a candidate in Minnesota's 6th Congressional District. Yet Denney says he's more pragmatic than some other libertarians and takes a different tack on campaign finance reform, which he champions.

In April, the Independence Party endorsed Denney for the 6th District seat. He's a 28-year-old law student from Stacy who hasn't held or run for other elected offices.

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Approving Medical Marijuana Was Just the First Step for Minnesota's Novel Treatment Program.

Minnesota is not the first state to legalize marijuana, but it is the first to include medical research as a key requirement on its complicated and uncharted path to turning an illegal recreational drug into a treatment for illness.

Now that the pitched legislative debates over whether to legalize marijuana at all are over, there is an ambitious timetable to put the new law into practice. The Minnesota Department of Health has one year to hire an administrator, choose two in-state companies who will manufacture and dispense marijuana products at up to eight locations, and draft safety guidelines for patients who are under the influence of medical cannabis.

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While the northern and southern parts of Minnesota have seen a spike in heroin-related criminal cases, Central Minnesota's drug of choice among criminals remains methamphetamine, according to local law enforcement.

Stearns County saw a 35 percent increase in the number of felony drug cases filed from 2012 to 2013. Of the combined 560 adult felony drug cases filed in those two years, 11 involved heroin -- about 2 percent, according to Stearns County Attorney Janelle Kendall.

By contrast, 214 cases, or 38 percent of the 560 total cases, involved meth, Kendall said.

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The health condition isn't specified in Minnesota's new law, but it could be added in the future.

A group of University of Minnesota researchers is testing to see if medical marijuana can help treat chronic pain caused by sickle cell disease, but state law is putting a hitch in their study.

As researchers continue with the study's next step - conducting human trials - they're heading to California, as Minnesota doesn't allow testing cannabis on people. The state's recently passed medical marijuana law also doesn't include sickle cell disease as a qualifying medical condition, but the University's current research could play a role in how that law changes in the future.

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The caramel-chocolate-flavored candy bar looked so innocent, like the Sky Bars I used to love as a child.

Sitting in my hotel room in Denver, I nibbled off the end and then, when nothing happened, nibbled some more. I figured if I was reporting on the social revolution rocking Colorado in January, the giddy culmination of pot Prohibition, I should try a taste of legal, edible pot from a local shop.

What could go wrong with a bite or two?

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Entrepreneur Behind Proposal Driven by Child's Urgent Need

MONTEVIDEO -- No sooner had Governor Mark Dayton signed the bill legalizing medical marijuana in Minnesota than Jeremy Pauling was lining up support to build the first facility to produce it in Montevideo.

"I was brought up not to sit on my hands," said Pauling.

There's another reason for his urgency. His seven year-old-daughter Katelyn suffers chronic seizures due to Batten Disease. It's an inherited and fatal neurological disease.

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A local marijuana activist is looking to get the city of Austin to bid on hosting one of eight medical marijuana dispensaries under Minnesota's new medical marijuana law.

Deanna Ryther asked the Austin City Council during its public meeting Monday to put together a committee to ask the state Department of Health to build a dispensary in Austin, citing her own need for medical marijuana as well as the high demand around the state.

"It's in our best interest to look at Austin as one of those cities," she said.

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The public senses - correctly - that marijuana poses fewer risks to society than alcohol does.

America is rushing headlong toward legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. A growing majority - 54 percent as of a Pew survey released just last month - favor legalization, and an even larger majority of millennials (69 percent) feels the same way. Colorado and Washington are the first states to move decisively in this direction, but they won't be the last. I basically think this is an OK development. Like Mark Kleiman, a public-policy professor at UCLA who is my guru on the regulation of controlled substances, I see full commercial legalization as a truly terrible idea, while I think noncommercial legalization, ideally via monopolies owned and operated by state governments, would be an improvement over the status quo. Regardless, marijuana legalization is coming, one way or another. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division via the New York Times A New York City police official watched agents pour liquor into a sewer following a raid during the Prohibition era, around 1921. We often forget that Prohibition was a response to problems with alcohol abuse in American culture.

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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Minnesota joined the ranks of 21 other states Thursday where marijuana is a legal medicine with a law that is one of the nation's most restrictive.

Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton signed legislation that sets up a medical marijuana program with tight controls over qualifying conditions and the way it is administered. People won't be able to smoke marijuana legally or access it in leaf form.

"I pray it will bring to the victims of ravaging illnesses the relief they are hoping for," Dayton said in a written statement.

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Appeals Court Rules California Card for Pot Irrelevant in Minnesota.

A card that permits a person to use medical marijuana in another state can't make drug charges in Minnesota go up in smoke, the state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

In December 2011, Jeffrey Thiel was stopped by a state trooper in Itasca County for speeding. After the trooper smelled marijuana, two Mason jars containing the drug were found in his vehicle. Thiel was charged with fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance.

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Patients Who Lobbied for the New Law Won't Participate in Test Because of Plant Marijuana Prohibition.

Cassie Traun, a 24-year-old IT worker from St. Paul, went to the Capitol about a dozen times in April and May to lobby for medical marijuana.

She sat before committees of lawmakers, and even confessed to buying and using the drug illegally because she's convinced it effectively treats her Crohn's disease.

This week Gov. Mark Dayton is expected to sign a bill legalizing marijuana for about 5,000 Minnesotans, including sufferers of Crohn's, an inflammatory bowel disease.

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