Rotorua businesses have raised their hands to help fundraise for medicinal cannabis.

Medical Cannabis Awareness New Zealand (MCANZ) is currently doing a fundraising campaign called #MC410 for legal cannabis treatments for people in a similar situation to Zoe Jefferies, a young Rotorua girl who is responding well to Sativex for her epilepsy.

Sativex is a Ministry of Health-approved cannabis oil-based mouth spray.

MCANZ co-ordinator Shane Le Brun said Rotorua was a great place to fundraise as local businesses often came forward to help.

"Most businesses think we are all a bunch of hippies, but we are quite the opposite."

A unique support centre for military veterans and first responders with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) opened in south Edmonton Saturday.

Marijuana for Trauma is hoping to help heal emotional wounds suffered by soldiers, paramedics and police officers by helping them access medical-grade cannabis.

“This is special,” Fabian Henry, Marijuana for Trauma CEO and co-founder, said. “We’re bringing in the people who are lost and putting a soul back in their body.”

Henry said his own personal experience with PTSD and struggling to get treatment makes him a firm believer his stores are addressing a need and also why they won’t be charging veterans for product.

Come Nov. 8, Florida could be the 26th state to legalize full-strength medical marijuana for patients with cancer, epilepsy and a host of other conditions.

That gives supporters and opponents of Amendment 2 just five weeks to persuade voters. And they've started in earnest, pumping millions of dollars from wealthy donors into TV ads, mailings and recruiting big-name endorsers.

Pro-medical marijuana group United for Care has logged $5.2 million since 2015, most of it from large donors, including a $1 million contribution last week from pot activist group New Approach.

Campaigns to legalize recreational marijuana use in Massachusetts and Maine launched their first television ads on Monday, hoping to boost public awareness and support ahead of November votes on the issue.

The ads began just over a month before Election Day, when voters in five U.S. states will determine whether to legalize the recreational use of the drug, following the lead of Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska, as well as the District of Columbia.

The Massachusetts ads feature Tom Nolan, a former Boston Police Department officer and current professor of criminal justice at Merrimack College, advocating for legalization as a way to better regulate marijuana use.

Criminal history checks on doctors and patients should not be used to assess applications to access medical marijuana in Queensland, a parliamentary committee has argued. 

The Health, Communities, Disability Services and Domestic and Family Violence Committee has delivered its report on a bill which would create a formal process for Queensland doctors to prescribe medicinal cannabis.

The Public Health (Medicinal Cannabis) Bill 2016 proposed allowing the chief executive of Queensland Health to request a criminal history report on medical practitioners – and their patients – as part of the decision on whether they were a suitable person to prescribe or receive the drug.

As the tally of states that have legalized adult or medical cannabis use increases, it's becoming easier than ever for consumers – particularly the law-abiding kind – to get their ganja. Still, an ounce of bud can set you back a pretty penny in some areas: D.C.'s $538.92 average price is more than 260% Oregon's, for example. To get a clearer picture of how prices vary across the country, we've put together a reference using Price of Weed data, which compiles anonymous submissions from buyers:

Ava, six, suffered from 20 seizures on Saturday and her mum Vera fears she won't survive that again.

A mother fears her daughter will die from multiple seizures if the Government does not make cannabis oil legal for medicinal use.

Mum-of-four Vera Twomey yesterday warned Health Minister Simon Harris he will have her “daughter’s death on his conscience” unless their is a change in legislation.

Her eldest child Ava, six, suffered 20 seizures on Saturday night and Vera claimed she has tried 11 different medicines on her but they have all failed.

She insisted cannabis oil – which is legal in parts of America but not here – would greatly help to calm her daughter’s chronic fits.

For the first time in Germany, a court has allowed a patient to cultivate their own cannabis for medicinal purposes. The 53-year-old man suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS).

Germany's Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) confirmed on Sunday that the patient from Mannheim, southwestern Germany, will be allowed to grow a maximum of 130 cannabis plants a year in his bathroom. The cannabis is strictly for personal use, a spokesperson said.

Academic Sciences of Puerto Rico (ASPR) stressed the importance of broadening the knowledge about and functions of medicinal cannabis to treat chronic health symptoms and diseases while it promoted the beginning of registration to purchase and use the plant on the island. Distribution of licenses and regulation by the Health Department for legal access to medicinal cannabis will take place starting Nov. 15.

Canada’s medical marijuana space, due to the country’s first mover advantage over many other nations, has attracted international attention. The sector has not disappointed, delivering solid, sometimes spectacular, returns to investors at home and abroad.