ENVER — Colorado schools would be forced to allow students to use medical cannabis under a bill that cleared its first hurdle Monday at the state Legislature.

The bill updates a new law that gives school districts the power to permit medical marijuana treatments for students under certain conditions. Patient advocates call the law useless because none of Colorado's 178 school districts currently allows such use.

"This is not about two kids smoking a joint between cars in a parking lot," said Jennie Stormes, mother of a teenage boy suspended from school last year for having yogurt mixed with cannabis pills to treat a disease that gives him seizures.

Coffeeshops What is the current situation regarding cannabis in the Netherlands? What has happened in the last year, following the departure of Ivo Opstelten? Is the weed pass still relevant and are tourists in Amsterdam still allowed to smoke cannabis? Read an update here.

On 9 March 2015, the most vehemently anti-cannabis politician the Netherlands has ever seen resigned from office. Ivo Opstelten’s position as Minister of Security and Justice became untenable after systematically misinforming the House of Representatives about a dubious deal with a criminal, which took place in 2000.

At a time when the War on Drugs is universally regarded as a pathetic failure and legalized marijuana is rapidly becoming the norm, the drug warriors seem determined as ever to keep prohibition alive. Vast resources still pour into the archaic federal drug bureaucracy, its work vigorously promoted by the usual suspects: the prison industry, the bulk of law enforcement, politicians of both major parties, Big Pharma.

The debate over legalising marijuana fired back up in France on Tuesday after a minister said cannabis should be decriminalised.

Here are places where marijuana is already allowed for recreational or medical reasons. 

- Uruguay -

The South American nation became in 2013 the first country in the world to legalise marijuana, with a plan to distribute it through pharmacies for $1.40 (1.20 euros) a gram.

Under Uruguayan law, citizens and residents can buy up to 40 grams (1.4 ounces) of pot a month from the pharmacies, grow it themselves at home, or join cannabis clubs where members jointly tend to the plants.

The government has licensed two private companies to produce and distribute marijuana.

BOSTON — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has derided The Boston Globe as “stupid” and “worthless” in response to a satirical front page printed by the newspaper Sunday that lampoons a potential Trump presidency.

The fake front page is dated April 9, 2017, and its main story is about Trump calling for deportations. Another article mentions work being halted on a wall at the Mexico border. There’s also a short item about backlash Trump received after tweeting a photo of his new dog he named “Madame Peng,” after China’s first lady Peng Liyuan.

The Boston Globe's mock front page.

Lawmakers have narrowly struck down the recently proposal by Colorado Representative Kathleen Conti to prohibit Colorado stores from selling marijuana products with a potency of more than 15 percent THC.

But that doesn't mean the fight to limit the amount of THC in legal cannabis is over. 

A French junior minister has sparked controversy by calling for renewed debate over the decriminalisation of cannabis. 

"Prohibition is not effective", Jean-Marie Le Guen told France's BFMTV. 

Other lawmakers - including fellow Socialists - dismissed the call, and a government spokesman said there were no plans for decriminalisation.

A recent WHO report found more French 15-year-olds smoked cannabis than in 41 other developed nations.

The state's top prosecutor said he remains skeptical about whether the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe destroyed its entire marijuana crop.

Attorney General Marty Jackley said he is investigating the reported destruction of the tribe's marijuana crop in November after it suspended plans to legalize marijuana on its reservation.

"I don’t think for a minute that they destroyed $1 million worth of marijuana. I don’t know where that went and it’s an open case. We never shut that case," Jackley said in an interview with Argus Leader Media. “We never got an opportunity to check what was destroyed."

Patients in "exceptional circumstances" in the Australian state of Victoria will soon be able to access medical cannabis, thanks to a bill passed Tuesday by the local government.

The law, which makes the state the first in the country to establish a legal framework for access to the pain-relieving drug, will facilitate its "manufacture, supply and access" in high-quality medical form, the government said in a statement. An Office of Medicinal Cannabis will also be created to oversee the drug's production and its prescription by doctors.

Children with severe epilepsy will be the first patient group to benefit in 2017, the government said. The state will supply the initial medical products, but hopes to see a reliable manufacturing industry in the future.

Menstrual cramps could be added to the list of conditions that can legally be treated with marijuana-based products.

Ms Jimenez said: "For many women, the response to pain so severe that it causes them to vomit or faint is either 'just deal with it' or a prescription drug that may not even alleviate their symptoms."

Goldberg’s products provide a means for women to get relief from cramps using the THC compound found in cannabis without having to get high. She told Vanity Fair: “If you don’t want to get 'high high', this is a product specifically to get rid of discomfort.

“Smoking a joint is fine, but most people can’t smoke a joint and go to work.”