Medical Marijuana

Medical marijuana is legal in 15 states and the District of Columbia. It's popularity is attracting attention from hedge fund managers and venture capitalists, not to mention a whole new batch of entrepreneurs.

New Jersey's Senate may vote Monday to defy Gov. Chris Christie over his proposed strict medical marijuana regulations. The vote is scheduled even though Christie and the state Assembly's prime sponsor of medical marijuana struck a deal on regulations last week.

Among the 90-some pages of draft rules and procedures for Colorado’s medical marijuana industry unveiled earlier this week by the Colorado Department of Revenue's Medical Marijuana Advisory Board is one that makes some patients particularly nervous. It's a plan for a massive new database of MMJ patients who enroll in the Medical Marijuana Registry -- and it will be available to law enforcement agencies round the clock. "This patient and medicine tracking database is a clear violation of Article XVIII, Section 14 of Constitution, Colorado's Medical Marijuana Amendment, which requires that the health agency maintain a confidential registry of patients, which can only be accessed by law enforcement for the purpose of determining whether a person who has been detained is a member of the Registry," said The Cannabis Therapy Institute in a press release.

ACC is a group of board-certified doctors who openly support medical marijuana for qualified patients. ACC's Dr. Edgar Suter stressed that not everybody who sends their information for an evaluation will qualify for medical marijuana, and he's only writing recommendations for patients that he believes, after a full examination, are truly qualified candidates. "We take, I think, great pains to care for the patient and honor the law," Suter says. "We're bending over backwards to make our process fair for everybody."

About 2 percent of Colorado residents now have cards to buy medical marijuana. The state health department said that it came up with the figure while clearing a backlog of medical marijuana applications. Officials said the number of approved medical marijuana users totals about 116,000.

Now that Centennial Seeds has established a presence in Colorado selling cannabis seeds to producers of medical marijuana, Ben Holmes wants to tackle supplying seeds to vendors in other states where medicinal use of the drug is legal.

Recreational users of marijuana are seeing price cuts on the street thanks to the growing number of states that have approved the drug for medicinal use. The price of cannabis, of course, varies wildly — depending on the strain purchased, its potency and the parts of the plant. Top quality pot in New York, for example, costs nearly $442 per ounce, while low quality is just $161, according to one website that tracks costs, PriceofWeed.com. On the whole, though, prices have been dropping nationwide over the past three to four years.

A large majority of Iowans favor legalizing marijuana for medical purposes, according to the results of the latest Hawkeye Poll conducted by the University of Iowa. Sixty-five percent of those sampled said they favored legalizing medical marijuana, and the support appears to be widespread. A majority of Democrats (69 percent), Republicans (57 percent) and Independents (77 percent) favor medical marijuana. A majority of people in each age group also supports this, with support increasing in the older age groups.