New Law Brings Texas One Step Closer to Legalizing Marijuana

Texas is one step closer to joining the 34 states where medicinal marijuana is legal after state legislators passed a law written by North Texas Republican representative and registered nurse Stephanie Klick to expand the conditions that can be treated with medicinal cannabis. Although the law narrowly defines which conditions can be treated with medicinal marijuana, it is a significant expansion. 

Study: Hemp Crops Could Restore Bee Populations

Hemp and cannabis plants do not produce nectar, but their pollen can keep bee populations happy and well-fed. Specifically, the study found that bees not only love the pollen from cannabis and hemp plants — they also can benefit from the plants’ abundance of pollen as a subsistence resource during times when local flora diversity has been stripped due to modern farming practices or a natural occurrence, such as drought. Bees are especially drawn to larger crop plots and taller plants, meaning industrial hemp carries the most benefits as an industry for the bees.

More and more older adults are using marijuana

The percentage of adults over the age of 65 who said they’d used some form of cannabis in the past year was 75 percent higher in 2018 — when 4.2 percent said they’d used it — than it was in 2015, according to new data published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Cannabis use in this group has been increasing dramatically since around 2006 when less than 0.5 percent of older adults said they’d used the drug.