Last week, state legislators put Illinois on track to become the 21st state to decriminalize cannabis.

If Governor Bruce Rauner signs the bill – and he’s said he likely will – residents would no longer face up to 6 months in jail and a fine up to $1,500 or getting caught with between 2.5-10 grams of marijuana.

Instead, They’ll be ticketed between $100-$200 per offense.

But other Americans aren’t so lucky. Some states impose hefty fines for small amounts of cannabis – even for personal use. Here are the 5 harshest state lawscurrently on the books for simple cannabis possession (based on data from NORML.)

Writtle's Simon Jones is looking at whether legal production in Jamaica could lead to a commercial medicinal marijuana sector.

A Writtle College student is assessing whether a new law that legalised medicinal production of marijuana in Jamaica could result in a sustainable and commercial industry.

Simon Jones, who is working on his PhD, is investigating how the new law has affected production systems in the country, and whether it will see Jamaica become the global hub of production of marijuana for medical purposes.

Reportedly the largest such show in New England, attendees received advice on advocating for the drug, growing and handling legal issues.

Medical marijuana advocates, some of whom say it is the only thing that stops their children’s seizures or credit it with making their own lives better by allowing them to stop taking harder pharmaceutical drugs, urged their fellow patients and caregivers at a medical marijuana trade show Sunday to stand up for their rights and fight against the stigma of their medicine.

Mellow Libertarian Gary Johnson isn’t running for president — he’s running to be America’s bodhisattva in chief.

Gary Johnson, full-time Libertarian presidential candidate and onetime cannabis entrepreneur, only appears to be running on a happiness platform of high times and low taxes.

In fact, this ostentatiously chill 63-year-old is fueled, just like Donald Trump, by outrage over immigrants. Except he thinks they are getting a raw deal.

Johnson was sitting placidly in a Manhattan hotel conference room last week — bodhisattva smile on lips, ear buds dangling around his neck — when I asked him whether he thought Trump was a legit small-government candidate. His grin dissipated like sativa smoke.

While the United States government continues to try to convince the average citizen that marijuana is one of the most dangerous substances in the world, a smoke signal has been seen rising up over the horizon from Washington D.C. that could be an indication that Uncle Sam’s longtime opposition to cannabis may be on the verge of change.

Marijuana, by most measures, is not in any way the scourge that alcohol is.

Our own National Post recently scandalized its famously conservative readers with a headline claiming that “about half of Canadians who drive while high insist pot doesn’t impair them.” The article — When is stoned too stoned? — further sensationalized the “crisis” by noting that “nothing would make [20 per cent of those surveyed] stop driving while stoned.”  With the Trudeau government poised to legalize marijuana, it was enough to send neocons into paroxysms of paranoia, our roads sure to be turned into killing fields by the demon killer weed.

Helen Kapalos' documentary A Life Of Its Own: The Truth About Medical Marijuana has been scheduled a release date. 

In the works since 2014, the chairperson of the Victorian Multicultural Commission took to her Facebook page to express delight over the news.

"Finally!! am proud to say my documentary, which features so many incredible Australians speaking with courage on medical marijuana, is about to be released at Palace Cinemas," she wrote on Monday. 

Directed and produced by Kapalos herself, A Life Of Its Own follows her quest to investigate the medical truths behind the life-giving and enhancing properties of marijuana. 

Growing up on a cotton farm in Missouri in the 1950s, Bill Richardson didn’t know a thing about marijuana. Nobody talked about it, he never saw it and he certainly never smoked it.

“I didn’t inhale,” Richardson, LSU’s 71-year-old vice president for agriculture and dean of the College of Agriculture, said with a smile in a recent interview.

Richardson has become the unlikely leader of an effort to get LSU into the pot business.

The Liberty Township family that moved to Colorado to treat their daughter with marijuana for her epilepsy is considering a move back to Ohio if Gov. John Kasich signs the medical-marijuana bill that the legislature passed last month.

“I have smiled inside and out at the thought of being able to come home, back to our family, friends, Skyline chili and Big Boy. I would pay big bucks for a Big Boy right about now,” said Heather Benton in Castle Rock, Colorado, outside Denver. “I’m just so tired of feeling like I don't have a home. As beautiful as it is, Colorado is not home.”

A vote on a bill to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana has been delayed a week due to opposition from Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Health Minister Yaakov Litzman.

The legislation was scheduled to come up for a vote in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday, but opposition from two key ministers responsible for enforcing it has led one of its authors, Likud’s MK Sharren Haskel, to delay the vote “in order to reach an agreement with my faction colleague” Erdan.