Lawyers representing plaintiffs in a proposed class action, claiming Health Canada breached privacy rights and jeopardized the safety of medical marijuana users, will be seeking damages of up to $20,000 per person, a court in Halifax heard Wednesday.

Federal Court Justice Michael Phelan is hearing a certification application for a proposed class action, put forward by medical marijuana users and growers across Canada, who were licensed under the previous federal medicinal marijuana program.

In Ecuador important advances have been made in the area of drug policy, with civil society playing an active part in them. The country's National Assembly is currently debating a bill: "Organic Law for the Comprehensive Prevention of Drugs and the Use of Catalogued Substances Subject to Regulation.”

In 1998 the country revised its “Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Act” (Act 108), under which consumption was decriminalised. However, there existed legal contradictions and flaws that ended up penalising users and consumers for holding, possession and transport, without any criterion of proportionality, all entailing sentences of 12-16 years.

In New York, one of the most liberal states in the country, why is the governor doing everything in his power to water down sensible marijuana reform?

hen New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation opening the door to medical marijuana last July, supporters of marijuana-policy reform were optimistic that change was finally coming to the Empire State. But the bill Cuomo signed was typical of New York's strange and troubled history with marijuana policy. Scheduled to launch next January, the medical-marijuana program contains so many gratuitous restrictions and baffling regulations that supporters remain unsure whether the new law is a tentative first step toward meaningful change, or a halfhearted measure doomed to kill sensible marijuana policy.

Earlier this week I approved the use of a medicinal cannabis product (actually a hemp derivative) in the case of a critically ill teenager.

The decision was an unremarkable, as it was fair and obvious. To have done otherwise in the particular circumstances would have been heartless in the extreme. The public protests and the sentiments of the well-meaning worthies counted for nothing with me in this case. It was much more a matter of plain old common sense.

In the wake of that decision there have been many wrong and naïve conclusions from the enthusiasts and the antagonists that the floodgates have been opened, and that the widespread availability of medicinal cannabis of every type for all manner of aches and pains is now just around the corner. How wrong they are!

Almost three million Germans regularly smoke marijuana, making its legalisation an issue of widespread interest. Activists, expert lawyers in Criminal Law and some politicians are beginning to demand its regulation.

In Germany some three million citizens recognise smoking cannabis regularly, almost five times more than those who report only having tried it. It is still illegal to consume it in the country, so one of marijuana lovers' struggles in the coming years is going to be its regulation.

SALEM - A legislative deal laying out the future of the legal marijuana market in Oregon was in danger of falling apart Wednesday as the result of yet another dispute about local curbs on retail sales of the drug.

Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, sent a late-night email to leaders of the legislative marijuana committee saying he couldn't agree with the deal they reached with city and county association lobbyists on the issue of local control.

Ferrioli, whose eastern Oregon district voted strongly against the marijuana legalization initiative last November, said he wanted to make sure that local governments have the ability to ban medical and recreational marijuana sales in their communities.

Home Secretary Theresa May and her statutory advisers on drug policy look to be heading for a showdown over government plans to deal with so-called "legal highs".

Some members of The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) are understood to be furious that they were not consulted on proposed legislation for a blanket ban on psychoactive substances.

The relationship between the ACMD and ministers in various governments has long been strained. There have been sackings and mass resignations in the last few years, amid claims that expert scientists were being bullied and ignored because their advice didn't coincide with government policy.

Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.) is pushing legislation to end funding for the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) marijuana eradication program.

“This is a ridiculous waste of precious federal resources, especially when multiple states and jurisdictions have already legalized marijuana,” Lieu said in a statement on Wednesday, according to Fox News.

“It is time for the federal government to stop making marijuana use or possession a federal crime,” he added.

Lieu’s proposed amendment to a 2016 fiscal spending bill would halve the DEA’s $18 million budget for the program, according to the report.

The anti-marijuana zealots in this country have always been entertaining, but I have lately noticed the appearance of some new defenders of prohibition, making Reefer Madness claims reminiscent of the earliest years of prohibition.

Harry J. Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was the principal architect of the Reefer Madness strategy aimed at demonizing marijuana and marijuana smokers.

In the American Magazine in 1937, in an article entitled “Marijuana: Assassin of Youth,” he wrote:

The Government Railway Police (GRP) seized around 80 kg ganja (marijuana) during the intensive checking drive at Agra Cantt railway station.

As per the information about movement of some suspects at Agra Cantt station, GRP carried out intensive checking at station. After arriving of Visakhapattanam-Nizamuddin Swarn Jayanti Express at around 3.30 pm, a team of GRP led by sub inspector Kamla Shankar found five unidentified bags in the circulating area besides he also investigated with two girls, standing near the bags but the girls’ denied and escaped, informed Gopesh Nath Khanna, Superintendent of Police (SP railways), on Wednesday.