New laws have been introduced by the South Australian Greens to legalise growing industrial hemp.

SA is the only state where industrial hemp, which can be used to make clothing, building products and even moisturiser, has not yet been legalised.

Greens MLC Tammy Franks said it was better for the environment than other crops such as cotton.

She said it had been outlawed in South Australia because of a stigma attached to other varieties of cannabis, which contained high levels of the psychoactive drug THC.

"It's the old mythology. It's the fear and the scare campaigns of a previous century," Ms Franks said.

With Cambodia’s traditional cash crops struggling to compete in global supply chains, the Kingdom could carve out a lucrative niche in commercial cannabis harvesting and exports – provided it acts fast to take advantage of the falling legal barriers, a Cambodia-based American innovator has argued.

Jim Plamondon, a former technical evangelist for Microsoft, said cannabis, the flowering plant that produces marijuana, was a potential goldmine for the Kingdom’s agricultural sector, which employs two-thirds of the country’s workforce.

He said US elections earlier this month were a tipping point, with more than half of the 50 US states having now legalised marijuana for medical use, such as treatment of glaucoma, and seven states legalising it for recreational use.

Even in states that have legalized marijuana, using it means sacrificing your right to armed self-defense.

If you want to buy a gun from a federally licensed dealer, you have to fill out Form 4473, which is aimed at determining whether you are legally allowed to own a firearm. A recent revision to the form by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) underlines how blithely the federal government strips Americans of their Second Amendment rights.

Republican Congressman Tom Price selected to run federal health agencies.

It appears president-elect Donald Trump is recruiting a team that will have no qualms, whatsoever, about castrating the medical marijuana industry when his administration takes office in 2017.

According to a report from the New York Times, the Donald has selected six term Republican Congressman Tom Price, a vicious opponent of medical marijuana, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services – putting him in place to manage all of the federal government health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

It’s early evening in a parking lot outside a DoubleTree in northeast Denver. At the north end of the lot is a 1987 Winnebago with seven people inside, gathered around a table covered with cannabis products: a concentrate pen, a dab rig, some bud flower and edibles. Once most of the group has gotten loaded, the seven are going to spend the rest of the night at the hotel, with a bunch of cops.

In less than three weeks, anyone 21 or older can legally possess and consume marijuana in the Bay State. Acquiring the drug is another story.

In less than three weeks, New England will enter uncharted waters — more specifically, uncharted waters for the East Coast of the United States.

Amid President-elect Donald Trump's pick of marijuana legalization opponent Jeff Sessions for attorney general, Massachusetts will become the first state on the East Coast to allow recreational marijuana use as the new law goes into effect Dec. 15.

That means anyone 21 or older — including Massachusetts residents and Rhode Islanders who cross the border — can legally possess and consume marijuana in the Bay State.

Acquiring the drug is another story.

Ann Lee and Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition don’t consider prohibition a conservative value.

Ann Lee remembers vividly the day that her paraplegic son, Richard, told her and her late husband, Bob, that marijuana helped his condition. “It was in August 1990, he was in a tier in the rehab hospital,” she says. “Richard looked at us in his wheelchair and said, ‘Marijuana is good for me.’ He was hesitant about saying that because he knew we were supporting the drug war.”

The Maryland Cannabis Commission announced Monday it will hire a consultant to review what steps — if any — it could take to improve diversity in the state's nascent medical marijuana industry.

The consultant will determine if it is feasible to conduct a study of whether minorities have been unfairly excluded from the industry, among other tasks. Such a determination would allow Maryland to consider race when awarding licenses to grow, process or distribute marijuana for medical use.

The announcement follows the filing of a lawsuit alleging the commission improperly ignored race when evaluating applicants for licenses, and calls by African-American lawmakers to halt the licensing process.

The thought of marijuana cultivation brings to mind images of the a “Back to the Land” Movement, and perhaps of a philosophy that eschews waste and aims for practices that are more in tune with the environment.

But the marijuana business has a dirty secret: it is likely that illicit marijuana grow ops use 40 per cent more electricity than metal mining in Canada today.

South Africa may legally regulate medical cannabis as soon as April 2017.

The South African Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Health has said that the government will amend the Medicines and Related Substances Act 1965 (MRS Act). Under the reformed legislation, cannabis – known locally as “dagga” - will be downgraded from a banned Schedule 7 drug to a Schedule 6 drug, meaning it can be prescribed. The revision of the law is to be drafted by late January 2017 and may be implemented by April 2017, according to South Africa’s News24.