These cannabis farmers did not abide by appropriate health and safety regulations

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - For Mexico City anti-narcotics cop Nieto Lara, a decision by the country's Supreme Court that could eventually lead to the legalization of marijuana means only one thing: major cartels abandoning the drug and focussing on harder stuff.

Wednesday's landmark Supreme Court ruling would allow four people to grow and consume the plant for recreational use in a country ravaged by a decade of drug violence, but any nationwide legalization of marijuana is likely years away.

Minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin & his colleagues want to adopt the Portugeuse "treat not punish" model

Minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin promised Hot Press in May that he’d be pushing the drugs agenda as hard as possible and has duly delivered with the publication today of the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality Report of the Committee on a Harm Reducing and Rehabilitative approach to possession of small amounts of illegal drugs.

INITIATIVE SUMMARY

Issue 3, the ResponsibleOhio marijuana legalization initiative, was trounced at the polls Tuesday, losing by a 2-to-1 margin despite polling that showed a competitive race and a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that went largely unanswered.

The defeat came even as voters, both in Ohio and nationwide, voice their support for pot legalization. Last month, a Quinnipiac poll had Ohio support for generic legalization at 53 percent, while a Gallup poll had national support for legalization at 58 percent.

Two Calgarians face charges following Thursday morning’s RCMP search of a rural property in Rocky View County that resulted in the seizure of hundreds of marijuana plants.

At approximately 9:30 a.m., members of the Airdrie RCMP including the crime reduction unit, K-9, and the ‘Green Team South’ executed a search warrant at a home at an undisclosed location near Balzac.

As a result of the search, officers discovered a marijuana grow-operation in the attached garage of the home. The street value of the 536 seized plants is estimated at $670,000.

Two people were located inside the home and arrested. A 58-year-old man and a 46-year-old woman, both from Calgary, face charges of production of marijuana and possession of property obtained by crime.

PENTICTON–“All we’re doing is providing a legal product to a legal consumer.”That’s what Jukka Laurio of Penticton says about his marijuana compassion club.The club operates out of Laurio’s Rush In and Finnish Cafe.It is not licensed by the city.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has now moved forward with his support for cannabis, filing a bill to decriminalize pot and nix it from the government’s list of most dangerous drugs.

He submitted the bill, entitled Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2015, to the Senate on Wednesday, seeking to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act. The legislation would let all 50 states decide for themselves whether they want to legalize pot for recreational or medical use without federal intervention.

Local and state law enforcement nationwide sees weed as the least of its drug worries, a report from the Drug Enforcement Administration found -- even as the DEA itself sees marijuana as a "growing concern."

As part of the 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary, the DEA asked a sample of over 1,100 local and state law enforcement agencies what they perceived as their biggest drug threat. For the fifth year in a row, marijuana was ranked as the least of officers' worries. Only 6 percent of respondents reported weed as the largest threat -- the lowest portion since 2007.