Legislation to protect owners and operators of nonprofit medical marijuana dispensaries has been approved by the California Senate. Senate Bill 439 passed today with a 22 to 12 vote, with not a single Republican voting in favor, and now heads to the state’s House of Representatives. If approved, the measure would clear up some of the confusion associated with the state’s fluctuating medical cannabis industry, and would provide dispensary owners the clearest legal protection they’ve ever had in the state.

With a final vote by the state Senate Friday, the Illinois legislature has finally approved a medical marijuana bill. It only took ten years.

If Gov. Patrick Quinn (D) signs it into law, Illinois will become either the 19th or the 20th medical marijuana state, depending on whether similar legislation in New Hampshire gets approved first. Quinn has signaled that he approves of medical marijuana, but has made no definitive statement about whether he would sign or veto the bill, so Illinois activists and the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) are calling on supporters to keep up the pressure. On Sunday, Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon said she supported the bill.

A NSW parliamentary committee has taken the bold step of recommending cannabis be available in leaf form to ease the suffering of the terminally ill.

Patients with cancer, full-blown AIDS or other fatal diseases would be allowed to possess and use up to 15 grams of dry cannabis.

But they wouldn't be able to grow their own cannabis and would need to buy the drug from illegal dealers.

Research published online May 14 in Social Psychological and Personality Science has uncovered that marijuana buffers people from experiencing social pain.

“Prior work has shown that the analgesic acetaminophen, which acts indirectly through CB1 receptors, reduces the pain of social exclusion. The current research provides the first evidence that marijuana also dampens the negative emotional consequences of social exclusion on negative emotional outcomes,” Timothy Deckman of the University of Kentucky and his colleagues wrote in the study.

May 14, 2013 — In a first-of-its-kind effort to illuminate the biochemical impact of trauma, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have discovered a connection between the quantity of cannabinoid receptors in the human brain, known as CB1 receptors, and post-traumatic stress disorder, the chronic, disabling condition that can plague trauma victims with flashbacks, nightmares and emotional instability.

Their findings, which appear online today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, will also be presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society of Biological Psychiatry in San Francisco.