Thousands of people took to the streets of Berlin to advocate for the legalization of cannabis on Saturday.

More than 4,000 people participated in what is known locally as the Hanfparade (hemp parade), according to local police.

Demonstrators are pushing for the legalization of the illicit drug as a natural resource, medicine and recreational drug.

Cannabis is currently illegal in Germany, except in rare instances for medical use.

Green Party politician Hans-Christian Stroebele was in attendance and tweeted: "Make hemp free."

The protest started at the capital's main train station and made its way towards Berlin's iconic town hall via the Health Ministry and the Reichstag.

Medicinal Cannabis Sativex and Bedrocan are now available in many European countries, and several have infrastructure in place to supply patients with medicinal cannabis. So which countries are moving with the times, and which are dragging their heels? Where are medicinal and recreational users most (and least) free to utilize their drug of choice? Let’s take a look at the facts.

Canadian market leader announces approvals to have Tweed products available for sale to German patients this summer.

Canopy Growth Corporation ("Canopy" or "the Company") is pleased to announce that its wholly owned subsidiary Tweed Inc. ("Tweed"), Canada's largest medical marijuana producer, has received necessary approvals in Canada and Germany to begin export of medical cannabis for sale to German patients. 

Working with MedCann GmbH Pharma and Nutraceuticals ("MedCann"), a privately held pharmaceutical importer and manufacturer, the transfer marks an important milestone for the Company and the first known incidence of dried cannabis being exported from a Canadian licensed producer to a major G7 country.

Canada’s licensed medical cannabis producers are searching for opportunities to expand overseas while Ottawa works on its plan to legalize recreational marijuana next spring, with two producers recently securing licences to sell their products in Europe.

The latest company to announce plans to export marijuana is Canopy Growth Corp., the largest of the country’s two dozen licensed producers. Canopy Growth said it would soon begin selling dried cannabis in pharmacies across Germany after securing an export licence from Health Canada on Wednesday. The company also said it had signed partnerships to share its technical expertise with medical marijuana companies in Brazil and Australia.

How – and why – online cannabis marketplaces will replace the black market.

The first thing ever bought or sold online was a bag of cannabis.

The deal went down in 1971. Decades before eBay or Amazon, back in the days when data was delivered in a shrieking telephonic trickle rather than a broadband light beam, the first thing ever traded online was cannabis.

Bavaria and Texas have a lot in common: distinctive local patriotism, unique dialects, a strong sense of tradition, and a whole lot of cows and cattle. The cannabis policy of both regions has remarkable parallels, too — much to the disappointment of cannabis consumers in München, Houston, Austin, or Nürnberg alike.

Bavaria’s strict stance is also feared by neighbors in Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, and neighboring states, as the police harass even recognized cannabis patients. Many foreign visitors are surprised that the Bavarian police perform drug checks at train stations and on motorway parking areas without probable cause, often ending in a humiliating body search. 

In 2015, the researchers at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Freiburg, Germany showed that the presence of cannabinoids in an individual's hair does not prove that the person consumed marijuana. More specifically, their findings, published in Scientific Reports, indicated that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active chemical ingredient found in cannabis, can be found in hair of non-consuming individuals due to transfer through cannabis consumers via their hands or sweat, or through passive marijuana-smoke exposure.1

While hair testing is widely used in employee drug screening and in child protective cases, their findings contradicted the prevailing view that hair testing is an accurate method for testing cannabis consumption.

A cannabis producing and processing company based in California has been selling and shipping a range of their products to UK customers. They also ship to other countries where the import and export of the cannabis flower is illegal, such as Brazil, Spain and Germany. This is the first time a cannabis-derived product has been shipped on an international scale, and the products have been reaching UK customers with no problem – but before you start to fret, everything is completely legal.

Legal marijuana is already a global industry and the U.S. is behind the curve.

When you think of the legal marijuana industry, you think of Colorado and California. But marijuana is not uniquely American, nor is the legalization movement.

New evidence for the clinical efficacy of cannabis therapy is presented in the latest issue of the Journal of Basic and Clinical Physiology and Pharmacology (JBCPP), a De Gruyter publication. The authors have studied cannabis therapy for many years at international research centers, examining its effects, potential applications, and risks.