The biggest medical marijuana farm in Latin America has been formally opened in Chile. The 6,900-stalk plantation was inaugurated on 19 January in the small town of Colbun, 170 miles south of the capital Santiago, and organisers say it could help around 4,000 patients across the country.

Between March and May, the project aims to harvest around 1.5 tonnes (1.65 tons) of the plant, under the supervision of the government's agricultural service, SAG. According to High Times, 0.43 grams of cannabis is typically used in one joint, meaning the Colbun project could produce enough of the plant for around 30 million marijuana cigarettes over those three months.

Number one: Canada elects a marijuana-legalizing prime minister.

The global anti-drug regime has been in place for more than a half century now, but the prohibitionist consensus has been crumbling for at least 20 years, and the decomposition continued apace this year.

The international treaties that make up the legal backbone of international drug prohibition still stand, but they are under increasing attack at the United Nations, which will take them up again next year. They are increasingly being breached (especially by marijuana legalization at the national and sub-national level) and nibbled away at around the edges by moves like drug decriminalization and some harm reduction measures such as supervised injection facilities.

While a 1986 law allowed for the manufacture, export, sale and medical and scientific use of marijuana, the practice was, until Tuesday, never formally regulated.Current law already allows possession of up to 20 grams of marijuana or cultivation of up to 20marijuana plants for personal use.

In April 2016, the United Nations will have a chance to forge a smarter way forward for global drug policy.

In this video, George Soros, Bryan Stevenson, Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, and a number of drug policy experts and advocates discuss why the time for reform is now. 

lombia on Tuesday became the latest in a growing number of nations around the world to legalize the use of cannabis for medical reasons.

However the rules vary widely across continents, with some countries permitting cannabis cultivation and others only allowing pharmaceuticals extracted from the drug.

A state of play:

– LATIN AMERICA –

– COLOMBIA: President Juan Manuel Santos signed a decree Tuesday making it fully legal to grow, process, import and export cannabis and its derivatives for medical and scientific use.

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos is legalizing the cultivation and sale of marijuana for medical and scientific purposes. “We do this through a decree that seeks to take advantage of the qualities of cannabis, or marijuana, to improve the life of people”.

Sixteen representatives of several Rastafarian organisations on Wednesday met with the Attorney General Basil Williams at his invitation in the AG’s Chambers and a key issue discussed was the decriminalisation of two ounces of marijuana for personal use.

In recent weeks there have been stepped up calls for the decriminalising of the possession of small amounts of the drug for personal and religious use amid a flood of such cases in the court leading to incarceration.

Green Medicine is a new documentary film that gives an insight into the medical cannabis scene in Chile. It follows the story of Daya Foundation, a non-profit organisation, that was granted a licence by the Chilean government to begin Latin America's first legal cannabis grow in 2014.

Does cannabis make a difference to the quality of life of medical patients suffering from a range of illnesses, including epilepsy and cancer?

The documentary team behind Green Medicine: Chile's medical cannabis Revolution spent 6 months following the progress of the medical marihuana debate in the country. The film features numerous interviews and highlights the arguments for and against the legalization of cannabis, for use by medical patients. 

In 2010, Patricia Spottencrow, an Oklahoma mother of four, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for selling just $31 worth of Marijuana. For many, the sentence was too harsh, especially since the convicted woman was a first time offender who had fallen on hard times.

But imagine how harder it has been for Rich Paul who had to stare down at a sentence of more than 80 years in a U.S prison for Marijuana; or Larry Duke, a Vietnam war veteran who is also serving life imprisonment for marijuana in the United States.