Experts point out the plant’s cultural significance. 

Today Japan has some of the strictest anti-cannabis laws in the world.

Punishment for possession is a maximum 5 years behind bars and illicit growers face 7-year sentences. Annually around 2000 people fall foul of these laws – their names splashed on the nightly news and their careers ruined forever. The same prohibition which dishes out these punishments also bans research into medical marijuana, forcing Japanese scientists overseas to conduct their studies.

LANSING, MI — Medical marijuana dispensaries would be taxed at 3 percent, and customer patients would also pay the state's six-percent sales tax, under legislation set for a vote Wednesday in the Michigan House.

The proposed dispensary tax was lowered from 8 percent in a substitute bill adopted by the House on Tuesday, and the medical tax would be eliminated if recreational marijuana use and taxable sales are later authorized in the state.

The state of Ohio sued the city of Toledo on Tuesday to overturn parts of its new marijuana decriminalization law, alleging it will encourage drug cartels to set up distribution operations in the city.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and the Lucas County prosecutor and sheriff filed the lawsuit in Lucas County Common Pleas court against the "Sensible Marijuana Ordinance" passed in last month's Toledo municipal election.

The ordinance eliminated fine and jail penalties for marijuana-related offenses in Ohio's fourth-largest city, according to DeWine. The northeastern Ohio city was the first in the state to enact a local ordinance decriminalizing marijuana.

BERLIN - Germany's Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices rejected an application on Monday by a Berlin district to legalize the sale of hashish and marijuana.

Monika Herrmann, the major of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district, had hoped to get approval for the sale of the drugs to registered adults in four shops in the district. But the institute nixed the proposal citing narcotics regulations banning the sale of the drugs except for very few medically justified cases.

The district has one month to appeal the decision.   

The vast majority of medical-marijuana certificates in Massachusetts -- more than 90 percent -- were issued to patients who have not been diagnosed with one of the eight pre-qualifying conditions established under state law, according to new data from the Department of Public Health. 

Andre Gomes is a politics and economics student at the University of Bath and is currently undertaking an internship with CLEAR

Is cannabis, as Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper claims, “infinitely worse” than tobacco, a substance that kills tens of thousands of Canadians each year?

Definitely not, say medical researchers and addiction experts, who are refuting Mr. Harper’s provocative comparison between cigarettes and marijuana.

Mr. Harper has routinely brought up marijuana as a campaign issue, contrasting his government’s tough stance against the drug with the Liberals’ and Greens’ plans to fully legalize it and the NDP’s pledge to at least decriminalize it and study legalization.

No matter who wins Argentina's upcoming election, it seems the country is set to diverge from its flirtation with drugs decriminalization and embark on a highly questionable and extremely dangerous strategy of militarizing its drug policy.

Tomorrow at 2pm at the Ohio Statehouse, advocates for medical marijuana research will be announcing their plans to build a $24 million research center in the state of Ohio if Issue 3 should pass in the 2015 election. Speaking at the event will be Dr. Sue Sisley, MD, Principal Investigator for the only FDA-approved randomized controlled trial looking at use of whole-plant marijuana (grown by NIDA) in combat veterans with treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), who will perform her research in Ohio at ICI’s future research facility.

At least two collective bargaining contracts between Oregon cannabis workers and the dispensaries that employ them have been signed, and more are expected to partake in collective bargaining as the industry develops.

The move to unionize by some cannabis workers strengthens the role unions have historically held in negotiating workplace conditions for their members, as labor unions enter a brand new market.

And the trend is expected to grow: As many as 50 Oregon cannabis businesses have expressed interest in unionizing to the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555. The union represents more than 20,000 retail and manufacturing workers in Oregon and Washington.