While attending a meeting on Capitol Hill with legislators and their staff on the myriad of over twenty proposed cannabis law reform legislation pending before Congress, a youngish legislative aide viewing a spreadsheet of all the varying bills, whilst listening to all of the talk of effectively nothing passing in this Congress, looked up dazed at everyone and suggested that ‘this potpourri of piecemeal legislation can’t really be passed without trying to address the underlying issue: federal prohibition statutes and guidelines’.

Yep, you got it Skippy!

Measure Allows Colorado to Keep Marijuana Taxes for School Construction/Prevention Programs.

At the second Republican presidential debate, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie claimed that he’s “not against medical marijuana.” But his exchange with a registered cannabis nurse this week seems to suggest otherwise.

On Wednesday at an event in Newton, Iowa, cannabis nurse and Gulf War veteran Shelly Van Winkle asked Christie how he would balance states’ rights to legalize medicinal marijuana with the fact that federal law still considers marijuana a Schedule 1 drug. Would he do anything to address the confusion?

File photo of a bag of marijuana being prepared for sale next to a money jar at BotanaCare in Northglenn, Colorado. RICK WILKING / Reuters File

The filing came in a legal battle between the Federal Reserve and the would-be Fourth Corner Credit Union, which was set up last year to serve Colorado's $700 million-a-year marijuana industry.

The credit union can't open without clearance from the Federal Reserve, which said in its filing that "transporting or transmitting funds known to have derived from the distribution of marijuana is illegal."

A Conservative MP who was famously tricked into condemning a made up drug called “Cake” has been put in charge of scrutinising the Government’s new drugs policy.

David Amess appeared on the satirical television programme Brass Eye in 1997 where he was filmed referring to Cake as “a big yellow death bullet”.

As a result of the encounter he asked ministers a real life question in Parliament about the made up drug.

It was announced this week that Mr Amess will chair the bill committee for the Government’s Psychoactive Substances Bill.

He will co-chair the committee with another MP, George Howarth.

The new bill seeks to ban the recreational use of legal highs, including laughing gas. 

CLEAR has published a report from the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit (IDMU) that shows a tax & regulate policy on cannabis could produce a net benefit to the UK economy of £6.7 billion per annum. This estimate is made from a detailed study of the size of the UK cannabis market, potential tax revenues, criminal justice system savings and additional costs of regulation including health information and education.

B.C. Senator Larry Campbell says prime minister-delegate Justin Trudeau should give it a year to 18 months before legalizing marijuana — to make sure it is done right.  

Trudeau promised to legalize marijuana across Canada 'right away', but hasn't committed to a timeline for legalization. 

Campbell — the former mayor of Vancouver — said there needs to be communication across all three levels of government for the proper roll-out of pot legalization. 

Washington, DC –-(ENEWSPF)--October 22, 2015.  Yesterday, as representatives from the Oregon Cannabis Association visit Capitol Hill, Representative Earl Blumenauer (OR-03) on the House floorcalled for an end to the federal government’s failed approach of marijuana prohibition.

To follow are Congressman Blumenauer’s remarks. Click here to watch his speech.

After Uruguay courageously legalised the use of cannabis under a new drug policy, could Iran be the next country to make it legal? From the outside, the image of Iran as retrograde and inherently conservative hardly fits with the reality of a more dynamic domestic political debate within. But drug policy is one of the areas of debate in which the Islamic Republic has produced some interesting, yet paradoxical, policies.

If there's one thing as surprising as the fact that outsider newcomers have outpaced establishment veterans in the Republican presidential race so far, it's that the contest is playing out in a state that has legalized marijuana.

After all the law enforcement expenditures and jail time meted out in America's war on drugs in recent decades, the political system has begun a turn — on overhauling the criminal justice system for nonviolent offenders, and on the legal status of marijuana. Colorado became the first state to legalize weed, but debate over the issue has spread across the country, and into the GOP race.