KENT, Ohio -- With the marijuana battle landing on Ohio's ballot for the first time next month, a new poll conducted by WKYC and Kent State University shows 56 percent of the state's voters support allowing adults to possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use.

The results also show 32 percent are opposed with another 10 percent who don't know how they feel yet.

Kent State Criminologist Anthony Vander Horst participated in the poll and said if the results are true, they could lead to bigger problems.

He has been studying the impact of marijuana on Denver since it was legalized there. He found home prices have gone up, along with homelessness.

He said police have had a hard time enforcing drug intoxication laws.

Tom Mulcair is promising that an NDP government would move toward legalizing marijuana.

In a live interview with Vice Canada, the NDP leader said he would decriminalize pot immediately if elected and then look at making the drug legal in Canada.

"We are on track to full legalization, but it is more complicated than snapping your fingers. We are not going to have weed being sold at the LCBO tomorrow morning," Mulcair told the live studio audience.

In a parliamentary report published in June, the NDP pledged it would study the regulation and legalization of marijuana. Now the NDP leader is going further by suggesting legalization is inevitable.

In the last half hour of the Democratic presidential debate Tuesday night, the conversation turned toward a subject that, according to CNN moderator Anderson Cooper, everybody in the room probably enjoyed: marijuana.

Before the commercial break, Anderson teased he would be asking the candidates about marijuana, but then he directed his question just to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders said if he could, he would vote to legalize marijuana in the state of Nevada -- which will see the question on its ballot in 2016. Nevada already has legal medical marijuana. Sanders then pivoted to focus on drug arrests, which he said are out of control.

When it comes to Cannabis and its use for medical purposes, Canada has been examining the issue in one form or another for at least 16 years. It has of course lead to the current Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations (MMPR) – with all of its promise and problems. Australia, on the other hand is now just beginning to think about what a policy regime would look like – and in their desire to “get it right” Australia is looking at Canada to derive some lessons learned.

Australia has a very unique opportunity to design a policy regime that can ignore the Canadian mistakes and avoid some of the rhetoric that has plagued the discussion and policy development while addressing the needs of patients and care givers.

He's the first presidential candidate from a major party to do so.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) became the first presidential candidate from a major party to say that he would support legalizing recreational marijuana if given the chance.

Asked whether he would support an upcoming ballot measure on legalizing recreational pot in Nevada, Sanders said that he would.

Last month, we worked with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, and “moms united and mandated to saving the lives of Drug Users” (mumsDU) to send out a policy questionnaire to all the political parties to get their opinion on issues surrounding an ever-changing drug policy landscape. Our intention was to gauge the direction each party would take Canada if elected on October 19.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who commands the liberal left with his economic policy positions, said he would vote in favor of a local Nevada measure that would legalize recreational pot use.

"I would vote yes because I am seeing in this country too many lives being destroyed for non-violent offenses," he said. "We have a criminal justice system that lets CEOs on Wall Street walk away, and yet we are imprisoning or giving jail sentences to young people who are smoking marijuana."

For former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the answer was hazier.

Asked if she was ready to take a position on legalizing recreational marijuana, she replied, "No."

MPs have spoken out against the legalisation of cannabis during a Parliamentary debate.

A Westminster Hall debate was held on Monday in response to an online petition calling for the production, sale and use of cannabis to be legalised.

Home Office Minister Mike Penning MP said that the Government would not support the call.

‘Disaster’

Cannabis was downgraded from a Class B drug to a Class C drug in 2004 in a move which was later branded a “disaster”.

In the three years following the downgrade, the number of cannabis users receiving NHS treatment doubled. The number of children aged 15-and-under being treated for mental illness also rose dramatically.

A British man jailed in Indonesia for possession of drugs has reportedly been released from prison.

Paul Beales was sentenced to four years in December 2012 in a case which involved three other Britons, one of whom is facing death by firing squad.

Beales was found guilty of illegal possession of cannabis after being arrested with Rachel Dougall and her partner Julian Ponder earlier that year in a sting operation against alleged drug traffickers.

They were held alongside Lindsay Sandiford, from Cheltenham, who was found with cocaine worth about £1.6 million as she arrived on the island three years ago.