A landmark report by politicians, calling for a more liberal drug regime based onhuman rights, had one detail that attracted particular attention.

"Junkies could use privacy law to avoid jail," was one headline for a story that suggested our drug law could be at an end. A prominent MP predicted it could "open the floodgates" and lead to drug users challenging their prosecutions and winning.

City councillors in Düsseldorf, capital of Germany's most populous state, are following Berlin in planning a pilot project in which cannabis could be sold legally to adults.

The move is the result of a joint push by the three parties which form the city's governing coalition, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Greens and Free Democratic Party (FDP), the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports.

The "traffic-light coalition" (red, green and yellow are the parties' respective colours) in the North Rhine-Westphalian capital came together on Wednesday to pass a plan providing for a strictly-regulated cannabis trade that would provide the drug to adults.

He was complimented on the way he prepared his defence and the judge told him some lawyers could learn from him

A judge complimented a Polish man telling him members of the legal profession could learn from how he presented his defence - before jailing him for six months.

Representing himself, 28-year old Polish national Przemyflaw Pril, caught cultivating cannabis plants, was complimented on the way he prepared his defence and was told by Judge Gemma Loughran: "There are lawyers who could learn from the care you have taken in presenting your material."

Authorities can't agree on a set pot policy

It’s police versus pot shops in the escalating battle over “medical” marijuana in Vancouver — and the cops say it’s keeping them busier than a bud grower at harvest time.

Marijuana shops are sprouting like weeds all over the city.

And despite claims that the stores are helping sick people by providing them with medical marijuana grown by green-thumbed angels of mercy, overwhelmed police say that’s not always the case.

“We’ve seen an explosion in the number of stores — we’ve gone from 12 to over 100,” said Sgt. Randy Fincham, spokesman for the Vancouver Police Department.

“It certainly is creating more work for us. It has caused us to take a hard look at where we’re going to put our police resources.”

There have been several ‘marijuana odor bans’ in states all over America in one form or another. The bans relate to the smell of marijuana being consumed, and/or to the smell of marijuana being cultivated. In Oregon, a court case was decided this week which determined that the smell of marijuana being consumed is not offensive. Per Oregon Live:

The Oregon Court of Appeals on Wednesday refused to declare the smell of marijuana smoke wafting into neighbors’ homes “unpleasant.”

The California National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed initiative language this week for marijuana legalization in California. It’s my understanding that the California NAACP does not intend to run a campaign itself, but is filing the initiative as a kind of ‘road map’ of what the organization would like to see in a marijuana legalization effort in California. There are multiple legalization efforts in California right now (as expected), but the one that seems to be getting the most traction is ReformCA. I could be wrong since I don’t live in California, but that’s what it seems like to me based off of my conversations with leading cannabis advocates.

With its proposed changes to Ley 20.000 (Law 20,000), Chile joins a growing list of Latin American countries decriminalizing marijuana. The initiative, which would grant Chileans the right to possess up to 10 grams of cannabis and grow up to six marijuana plants at a time, was passed in Chile’s Chamber of Deputies on July 7 with 68 voting in favor and 39 against.

NDP leader Tom Mulcair said he will decriminalize marijuana the “minute we form government” during a stop in British Columbia on Thursday.

“I want to make sure that everybody understands, that the NDP’s position is decriminalization the minute we form government, it’s something we can do right away,” he said.

LOS ANGELES -- Graffiti-tagged buildings, barricaded doors and iron-barred windows mark nearly every block of Avalon Boulevard as it cuts through the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood of Wilmington, 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.

The streets are lined with small mom-and-pop shops - clothing stores, a piñata shop, garages and small, family-owned restaurants - and a clutch of illegal medical marijuana dispensaries, some located within feet of each other.

Other nearby dispensaries are shuttered with signs announcing 'closed,' 'for lease' and 'for rent' - the result of the city's most recent attempts to close the door on L.A.'s robust illegal medical marijuana industry. But when one dispensary closes, it usually opens somewhere else, police say.

SANFORD — Eric Chipman doesn’t hide his medical marijuana use, which he says best treats the lasting effects of a severe accident he was in 40 years ago.

So, during a two-week stay at Southern Maine Health Care in Sanford, Chipman told his doctors he was rubbing a marijuana-based lotion into his skin that relieves pain better than the narcotic drugs he tries to avoid. After making that disclosure, however, Chipman was told by hospital officials he was in violation of hospital policy and must remove it from the property.

The loss of his medicine slowed Chipman’s recovery, he said, because of pain and inflexibility that makes it harder to do physical therapy sessions and gain back the strength he needs to care for himself and get in and out of his wheelchair.