Prague, June 4 (CTK) - More than a quarter of the 10.5 million inhabitants of the Czech Republic have some type of addiction, national drug coordinator Jindrich Voboril told CTK Thursday, adding that the number is increasing, while the amount of money for prevention and treatment is decreasing.

Two million adults drink alcohol every day and 94 percent of children under 15 have some experience with it. Around 200,000 Czechs smoke marijuana, 45,000 use hard drugs and there are around 150,000 gamblers, Voboril said.

He said the number of contact centres for drug addicts is insufficient.

"There should definitively be more contact centres and its employees should have an opportunity to work with the people (addicts)," Voboril said

This weekend, a group of volunteers are wrapping up a 420 km bike ride with a very specific goal in mind: making money for a clinical trial of cannabis as a potential treatment to fight brain cancer

For the week ended Friday, June 12, the spot price index for a pound of cannabis rose to $1,718, up about 4.4% from $1,646 a pound in the prior week. The futures price for December 2015 rose from $1,175 a pound last week to $1,250.

Half of the past week’s transactions fell in a range of $1,700 to $1,900 per pound, but the largest sales traded in the range of $1,400 to $1,700, according to the analysts at Cannabis Benchmarks. The asking price in Colorado averaged $1,930 a pound last week, nearly 12% higher than the settlement price. Colorado authorities arrested a dispensary employee last week for trying to sell 4.5 pounds of marijuana on the black market.

Eliyah Hendrickson, 2, who was diagnosed with Dravet Syndrome when he was five-months-old by a Colorado doctor, plays with a toy on Thursday at his home in Sioux Falls. "With Dravet Syndrome then comes a whole grab bag of neurological and some physical issues," George Hendrickson, the boy's dad, said. "We know of other children with Dravet that couldn't walk and talk until they went on CBD--the cannabis oil--then within 5 to 6 months these kids would cut their seizures down by 90 to 95 percent or more and would learn to walk and talk," Hendrickson said.(Photo: Joe Ahlquist / Argus Leader)Buy Photo

Six-hundred fifty miles.

That's the length Melissa Mentele has gone in search of relief.

On the business side, recreational marijuana exposes employers to increased workplace accidents, more workers’ compensation claims and lower overall workplace productivity. We also can’t ignore the adverse effects marijuana has on adolescents’ developing brains, which has serious implications for the development of Arizona’s workforce talent pipeline. No credible economic development organization would tout marijuana legalization as a reason to locate in Arizona. Legalization sends the wrong message to the companies we want to grow and invest here. On the public health side, Arizona faces increased rates of addiction and the costs that come with drug treatment and rehabilitation.

House Republicans advanced a budget plan Thursday that would prevent legal sales of marijuana in D.C. for more than two years.

Here’s the surprise: advocates for legalization called it a victory.

What the Republican budget does not do – at least not yet – is roll back Initiative 71, the voter-approved measure from November that legalized pot for recreational use in the nation’s capital. Since early this year, D.C. residents have been allowed to possess, grow and, in the privacy of their own homes, smoke marijuana.

A white supremacist and neo-Nazi supporter accused of running a large cannabis plantation is suspected of selling his product to members of an Indigenous community in north Queensland, say police.

John Lee, who came to police attention through his suspected links to the Rebels motorcycle club, was charged with cannabis cultivation after a raid in Cooktown allegedly found him with 206 plants and 2kg of bagged cannabis.

The 49-year-old has a 10cm by 10cm swastika tattooed on his head and police found his large shed festooned with Nazi flags and at least 19 swastikas – including one on a wall fan – alongside confederate flags commonly associated with the Rebels gang.

People are poisoning themselves with synthetic pot products at more than twice the rate as this time last year, according to a report released this Friday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Marijuana users rejoiced last week week when, in what has been called the “marijuana vote-a-rama,” the House voted on three laws that prevent the Department of Justice from enforcing federal marijuana laws in states that have legalized weed.