In the first five months of the year, Iranian authorities may have executed nearly 250 people for drug offenses, according to multiple human rights organizations. That's almost two people a day. And despite the alarming frequency with which alleged drug offenders are being put to death in the country, the United Nations is readying a multimillion-dollar package to continue helping Iranian authorities with their anti-drug efforts -- a move that critics say stands in violation of the U.N.'s own human rights policy.

AUSTIN, Texas (Christian Examiner) -- Texas bills legalizing marijuana and decriminalizing possession of it passed state House committees earlier this month, but will not become law in the Lone Star State.

House Calendar Committee Chair Todd Hunter (R- Corpus Christi) reportedly refused to schedule the two bills before the deadline for action, The Daily Chronic reported.

A northern Indiana judge rejected an argument by a man who asked that his marijuana possession charge be reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor because he follows the Rastafarian faith.

Jerome Scott said that he was being charitable to others by cultivating marijuana to ease ailments from chronic back pain to cancer, the South Bend Tribune reports. St. Joseph Superior Court Judge Jane Woodward Miller said he still broke the law.

SAN DIEGO: Cannabis has been illegal in Brazil – regardless of whether the origin is from marijuana or hemp. That has all changed thanks to two mothers, one in the United States and one in Brazil – and Real Scientific Hemp Oil™ (RSHO™), a Medical Marijuana, Inc.-marketed hemp product via its partnership with HempMeds Brasil™.

Conroe Police Department Public Information Officer Dorcy Riddle stands amongst 10 to 20,000 marijuana plants waiting to be cut down by authorities Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2013, in Conroe, Texas. (AP Photo/ Houston Chronicle, Cody Duty)

AUSTIN–The House preliminarily approved a narrowly-focused medicinal marijuana bill Monday that would allow patients with one type of epilepsy to use low-THC cannabis to treat their symptoms.

Under the bill, physicians could prescribe orally-administered cannabis that is low in THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana, for patients with intractable epilepsy who haven’t found success with other drugs. The House approved the measure 96-34.

AUTHORITIES are struggling to cope with ‘dangerous’ legal highs because the drug industry is moving faster than legislation can, police say.

Figures uncovered by The Northern Echo show that legal highs have been implicated in a growing number of incidents investigated by Durham Police in recent years.

Officers believe users are risking their lives by taking drugs that are not tested or regulated and are often mixed with illegal substances.

Between 2012 and 2015, incidents across County Durham involving legal highs escalated from just 13 in 2012 to 92 in 2014-15, according to a Freedom of Information request.

In an attempt to prevent the legalization of marijuana in Arizona, a multi-agency drug war task force has donated tens of thousands of dollars collected from the civil asset forfeiture program to ensure a statewide cannabis industry never sees the light of day.

Sweetwater County Sheriff Mike Lowell knows people in his community buy marijuana from Colorado.

“When we ask where it came from, without exception, it’s Colorado,” Lowell said. “I assume they’re going across the border, purchasing and coming back.”

But those purchases in Colorado, where marijuana was legalized last year, haven’t translated into an increase in prosecutions for possessing the drug. In fact, marijuana charges in Sweetwater County dropped 18 percent from 2013 to 2014.

Overall, the county has maintained an average of 36 marijuana charges each year for the past three years.

“The change in drug arrests has been nonexistent,” Lowell said.

Around three weeks ago the news broke that Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, who is a Labour TD for Dublin North-Central, had been appointed the new Minister for Drugs Strategy

The role of Minister for Drugs Strategy had been vacant for 10 months following the July 2014 cabinet reshuffle. It appeared that Minister for Health Leo Varadkar was set to oversee drug policy however the government has decided to give the position to Ó Ríordáin.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Colombia just discarded a cornerstone of the American-backed fight against drugs, blocking the aerial spraying of coca, the plant used to make cocaine. Bolivia kicked out the United States Drug Enforcement Administration years ago and allows farmers to grow small amounts of the crop.