For Justin Trudeau, making the legalization of marijuana a key plank in his election platform was relatively easy. 

Now his government faces the complicated – and potentially controversial – task of regulating the distribution and sale.

These are not uncharted waters. A handful of American states have recently taken the plunge, and the experiences in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia provide examples of how marijuana sales could be introduced in Canada.

While it's nice that Trudeau says he wants to legalize marijuana, let's be clear that the reasons he's giving for legalization are all wrong.

While it may be politically wise to call for legalization mainly as a way of limiting access to minors while also raising some tax revenue, these are actually not at all the real reasons cannabis should be legalized.

Cannabis should be legalized because it is a wonderful plant, and because Canada's 100-year war on cannabis has had no redeeming features whatsoever.

Cannabis is beneficial and prohibition is wrong.

CINCINNATI — The sheer size of Tuesday’s crushing electoral defeat of marijuana legalization in the Buckeye State surprised political experts inside and out of Ohio. Despite a $20 million campaign, the proposed constitutional amendment, known as Issue 3, lost. Amid its smoking wreckage, six reasons emerge to explain what happened to Issue 3 — and what happens next.

With 99% of precincts reporting, the amendment was defeated 64% to 36%.

Former Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg has joined the Global Commission on Drug Policy, an international group that advocates for drug policy reform on a global level. Nick Clegg joins a host of influential names from business and politics on the Commission, including entrepreneur Richard Branson, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and former US Secretary of State George Schultz.

Portugal is a hot topic in drug reform debates. Yet, the experiment being carried out in that European country is often mischaracterized by both supporters and critics. The secret of Portugal’s drug policy success is not decriminalization, but its capacity to tailor responses to the needs of specific users.

The current debate surrounding failures in drug policy, particularly in the United States, has largely centered on over-incarceration, strong-armed law enforcement, and harmful drug use.

DENVER - Colorado voters approved Proposition BB in the Nov. 3 election, therefore deciding to let the state keep a surplus in pot tax revenue.

Proposition BB passed with 66 percent of votes in favor of it.

See election results here.

Colorado law required the vote because the revenue exceeded the initial estimate. The overall revenue was more than voters approved for a marijuana tax in 2013. TABOR requires a projection to be made in a tax’s first year.

Call it Not So O-high-o. Voters in the Buckeye State resoundingly rejected an attempt to legalize recreational marijuana by constitutional amendment on Tuesday. But unlike some other cases in which ballot referenda to liberalize drug laws were defeated at the polls, it’s a bit more difficult to draw broad conclusions in Ohio.

Tonight, Ohio voters rejected Issue 3, a referendum on recreational marijuana legalization. The ballot measure served as the only statewide marijuana measure to appear in 2015 and is the first defeat for marijuana advocates since Florida narrowly rejected medical marijuana last November. It is the first loss for a recreational legalization initiative since 2012.

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Shawn House stands at the bottom of the Pennsylvania Capitol steps with a smile on his face and an empty bag of pretzels in his hands.

"Hempzel's Pretzels," he says. "It's a mix of hemp and pretzels."

It's also completely legal. House, who runs the Lancaster Trading Company and it's Hempzel's Pretzels brand, uses industrial hemp in his products every day. The hemp he uses comes from the same cannabis species as the more familiar drug, and the plant it grows from looks similar to the drug, but it contains minimal doses of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the substance which leads to the high marijuana smokers feel.

"Knowledge is powerful," Shawn says. "Just because you have seed, doesn't mean you have weed."

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of Mexico will debate a highly-anticipated case concerning the constitutionality of barring the consumption and cultivation of marijuana for personal use in the country. 

The case, brought forward by the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Personal Use (SMART, in Spanish), argues that barring personal use of marijuana violates the constitutional right to freely develop one's personality.