COTOPAXI, Colo. -

The US Department of Justice says that a federal drug raid on eight properties in Cotopaxi and Westcliffe netted more than 1,000 marijuana plants and 20 indictments.

Six of the raided properties had Cotopaxi addresses in Fremont County, and two had Westcliffe addresses in Custer County.

An affidavit obtained by KRDO NewsChannel 13 says the raid was part of an ongoing investigation by the Colorado Springs Office of the Drug Enforcement Agency that began last year.

Eight search warrants that were obtained as part of that investigation were executed on September 1, 2015.

The execution of those warrants resulted in the recovery of 1,002 marijuana plants, 50 pounds of dried marijuana, 28 firearms and over $25,000 cash.

A PARAPLEGIC man’s request to prove to Health officials that cannabis is a better painkiller than conventional pharmaceuticals ‘would never be accepted’, the Health Minister has said.

Health Minister Andrew Green has responded after 28-year-old Islander Daniel Clark, who is wheelchair bound following a motorbike accident ten years ago, offered to prove to doctors that cannabis was better at alleviating his pain than prescription drugs.

Mr Clark, who says his pain is so severe he has considered selling his home and moving to a place where the class B drug is legal, has twice offered to be admitted to hospital for a two-week period in which he would spend a week using cannabis and a week on pharmaceutical painkillers.

As cannabis becomes a legitimate, legal, and highly profitable crop, scientists are finally beginning to analyze and understand it. And what they're finding is that the long ban has led to consumers basically knowing nothing about it.

As the ban on cannabis lessens, scientists have finally sweeping away the popular understanding of the crop and how it works, which has largely been informed by guesswork and superstition. Case in point: the divide between indica and sativa strains, which a team from various Canadian universities recently examined.

SUPPORTERS have come out in force to back a Carrum Downs couple facing drug charges over the supply of medical cannabis.

Holding flags and banners calling for cannabis to be legalised, they were at Frankston Court today to support Matthew and Elizabeth Pallett in their legal battle.

The Palletts, who ran a “compassion club” that supplied medical cannabis, are facing charges including possessing, supplying and trafficking a drug of dependence (cannabis).

Mr Pallett successfully applied before magistrate Lou Hill for the matter to be adjourned to Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, September 9.

The Palletts ultimately want the matter to go before a jury, where they are confident their pleas of not guilty will be successful.

A landmark report by the West Africa Commission on Drugs (WACD) in June 2014, “Not Just for Transit: Drugs, the State and Society in West Africa”, emphasized decriminalizing some degree of narcotic drug use and possession for personal use, while calling for drug traffickers and their accomplices to face the full force of the law. This sensible recommendation is particularly appropriate for marijuana or cannabis, which is widely cultivated and used in West Africa. Its users, partly because they are mostly young and poor, continue to be disproportionately penalized by the criminal justice systems in the region – a serious human rights and governance problem. This violation must be urgently stopped.

After 17 months, Dr. Suzanne Sisley is about to get the marijuana she needs to start a federally approved clinical study into whether marijuana helps veterans with PTSD.

She proposed this research five years ago, and has been herding bureaucratic turtles ever since. She’ll do the study in Arizona even though none of the state’s universities wanted to work with her on the fully funded study into one of the hottest topics around.

There is a list of reasons why vets are still waiting for answers.

One is the marijuana monopoly the feds built with your tax money.

A Mexican judge has granted a couple permission to import a marijuana-derived compound to treat the frequent seizures of their eight-year old daughter, an unprecedented ruling in the Latin American country, the family's attorney told EFE.

"It's a watershed in our country because the marijuana issue in our country has been very complicated. What makes this significant is the departure from a policy of prohibiting all cannabis-related conduct," Fabian Aguinaco said Tuesday.

Martin Santos, a federal judge, on Aug. 17 granted an "amparo" request to the parents of Graciela Elizalde Benavides, a decision that forces authorities to allow them to import a medication containing cannabidiol, a prohibited substance under Mexico's General Health Law.

Not too much…and that’s greatly to its credit! The Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP, pronounced “wissip”), which is the official think tank for Washington’s state legislature in Olympia, has been charged with comprehensively assessing the costs and benefits of marijuana legalization for Washington’s citizens. The initiative that legalized recreational marijuana back in 2012, I-502, explicitly requires reports from WSIPP in 2015, 2017, 2022, and 2032. It published the first of those reports (authored by Senior Research Associate Adam Darnell) yesterday.

“My main goal is to get out of El Paso because I want to live,” Anderson said.

Anderson has stage three cervical cancer. She has gone through chemotherapy and radiation, spending months on end in the hospital. She tried CBD oils while on chemotherapy and said there is a noticeable difference.

“Chemo that was a doozy for me but the radiation is what really got me,” Anderson said. “I cannot see how people do it without it. I'm in all honesty if I didn't have it when I was doing the chemo I would not have made it.”

A few weeks ago, a parliamentary petition calling for the government to ’make the production, sale and use of cannabis legal’ attracted over 200,000 signatures from the public, meaning it would be considered for debate in the House of Commons and causing many to hope that an issue overhauling laws around the world might finally be discussed properly and sensibly in the UK.

The Home Office issued a crushing response however, claiming that “substantial scientific evidence shows cannabis is a harmful drug that can damage human health,” and dismissing the idea that the legalisation of the drug would bring huge tax benefits and a reduction in crime from its illicit trade.