This week a delegation from the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality travelled to Portugal to learn about its drugs policy, and to assess the impact of the changes that were implemented over a decade ago.

The delegation also visited the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) which this week launched its 2015 report

The following politicians makeup the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality:

DOUGLAS, Ariz. –  Customs officials in the border town of Douglas arrested a 17-year-old boy after finding his bicycle's tires stuffed with more than three pounds of marijuana.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say officers at the Douglas Port of Entry arrested the boy Saturday.

They say the Douglas boy was handed over to Homeland Security Investigations agents.

Officials say agents also made several large drug seizures at border crossings over the weekend.

Agents in Nogales found three pounds of heroin in a man's luggage on Saturday, and the next day arrested a 14-year-old Mexican girl who had two pounds of methamphetamine under her clothes.

With a wave of legalization measures in recent years, marijuana in some form is now legal in 38 states. But in the 12 where it is not — a swath of the west and Midwest, including Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas, and in the rust belt states of Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania — parents whose use of the drug would be legal elsewhere are losing their children and often seen as irresponsible parenting pariahs.

In March, Child Protective Service workers took Shona Banda’s 11-year-old son from her home in Garden City, Kansas, saying her use of marijuana to control debilitating Crohn’s Disease put the child in danger.

There is growing pressure on Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne to relax the rules around medicinal marijuana – but any proposed changes won't have the Prime Minister's backing.

Nineteen-year-old Alex Renton has been in an induced coma at Wellington Hospital for more than a month, and his doctor and parents believe cannabinoid oil could improve his condition.

Protestors turned out yesterday to urge Mr Dunne to sign off on it in Wellington and Nelson, including Labour's West Coast MP Damien O'Connor.

Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly, who was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, says it's unfair to string families along.

State lawmakers will again debate whether to allow medical marijuana to be dispensed in Louisiana.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — As a majority of Louisiana lawmakers push forward with a proposed medical marijuana law, some are looking to the past — and not with nostalgia.

Some 15 years after former Gov. Edwin Edwards was convicted of bribery and extortion in a corruption scheme involving riverboat casino licenses, some lawmakers worry weaknesses in the medical marijuana proposal could lead to similar abuse.

Tanzania ranks fourth in the world as a producer of dried marijuana.

ARUSHA, Tanzania, (Xinhua) -- Police in northern Tanzania on Saturday announced to have confiscated 12.4 tons of marijuana, the biggest seizure of the illicit drug of the year in the East African nation.

Arusha Regional Police Chief Liberatus Sabas told reporters here that the seizure is part of their commitment to freeing the country from narcotics and drugs.

"This is a result of collective effort made by the police force, Anti-Narcotics Unit and other security agencies," Sabas said.

Get ready for John Morgan's Traveling Marijuana Medicine Show 2.0.

United For Care, which last year put a failed constitutional amendment proposal on the November election ballot, expects to begin its main petition push in a matter of weeks to get a new proposal to voters in November 2016.

The organization, chaired by Orlando lawyer Morgan, already has a few volunteers pushing petitions. Yet it has raised little money so far for what would have to be a multimillion-dollar effort to get the issue on the ballot.

Still, it has resources from the failed 2014 campaign, including thousands of now-experienced, impassioned volunteers, ballot language that already has passed legal muster and Morgan's checkbook.

Portugal decriminalized the use of all drugs in 2001. Weed, cocaine, heroin, you name it -- Portugal decided to treat possession and use of small quantities of these drugs as a public health issue, not a criminal one. The drugs were still illegal, of course. But now getting caught with them meant a small fine and maybe a referral to a treatment program -- not jail time and a criminal record.

Drugs. The report by the European Agency Cannabis is still the most consumed. In 2014, 101 new drugs introduced to the market, and an increasing power and purity of drugs.

The EMCDDA report shows a general stagnation of demand for heroin. Approximately 19.3 million adults (aged 15-64) reported use of cannabis in the last year. About 3.4 million adults (15-64 years) have used cocaine in the last year, of which 2.3 million are young adults (15-34 years). Social media and apps play an increasing role in drug markets.