A historic Senate medical marijuana bill unveiled Tuesday would dramatically reshape the landscape for the plant, nearly 80 years after it was effectively criminalized.

The bill, introduced by Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), would end the federal prohibition on medical marijuana and eliminate the ambiguity surrounding related state laws. It would untie the hands of veterans’ doctors when it comes to recommending the drug and bankers when it comes to providing business services to the industry. It would also facilitate very limited inter-state trade, expand research and shift marijuana out of the most severe category in the federal government’s drug classification.

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you have a cookie on your computer or your smartphone that says how much you like weed—or at least how you feel about the idea of weed being legalized.

Matt Phillips said that when his daughter Lillie Reese was born two and a half years ago, everything seemed fine.

“She was a perfectly normal, perfectly healthy baby ... until she was four months old. She stopped smiling,” he said. “She stopped laughing. She stopped rolling over. She just stopped developing.”

Doctors performed numerous tests and found she was suffering from a type of epilepsy called infantile spasms.

“Basically, her brain was being scrambled, and she was having seizures. Twenty-four hours a day,” Phillips said.

“Her brain is structurally normal. Usually, when children have infantile spasms they find brain malformations or lesions or some sort of brain injury,” Phillips said. “But they don’t know why she is having them.”

The Liberal Democrats have confirmed that their 2015 manifesto will contain radical proposals for drug policy reform. Many of the measures echo the approach taken in Portugal, where a policy of decriminalisation was put into practice in 2001.

Drugs policy expert Susanne MacGregor from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine explains what reforms like these would mean for the UK.

What is Portugal’s drugs policy?

In 2001, Portugal reformed its drug policies to address public concern around problematic drug use, especially intravenous heroin use. A government-appointed expert commission proposed decriminalising possession of any illicit drug for personal use, which is defined as the amount an average user would consume in a ten-day period.

Juan Aguilar-Zavala and Mario Perez-Paz were arrested following a high-speed chase.(Photo: PCSO)

It was a chaotic scene on Interstate 8 near Casa Grande, Arizona, Wednesday morning as police chased a white truck from which, authorities said, two occupants started tossing bales of marijuana.

Much of that evidence was lost, however, as motorists who followed behind the chase stopped to pick up the drugs.

Jim Knupp, a Pinal County Sheriff's Office spokesman, said a deputy was monitoring traffic along the highway near Trekell Road when he spotted a 2006 White Trailblazer traveling at high rate of speed.

Whonnock residents fear their bucolic way of life will be ruined if plans for a large medical marijuana greenhouse are approved by Health Canada.

The conflict began about a year ago after a company purchased 15 acres of farmland in an area surrounded by smaller acreages. The property, which is in the Agricultural Land Reserve, was traditionally used for intensive agriculture, according to its new owner, Dan Sutton, managing director of Tantalus Labs. The company plans to continue that tradition, building a 40,000-square-foot greenhouse to grow marijuana.

But neighbours say the new crop is unlike any other farm use.

“We’re not against this industry, the problem is the location,” said Sylvie Jensen. “Industrial grow-ops don’t belong in a place like this.”

The Dutch embassy in Washington DC went to extreme, witty lengths last month to put straight a misconception it says city hall there has created about marijuana use in Amsterdam.

[The Dutch embassy's infographic with an Amsterdam Washington comparison]

The Dutch embassy’s infographic with an Amsterdam Washington comparison

The embassy issued a news release that links to an infographic that lays out a comparison between the two cities. The infographic is best described as cynical and sarcastic.

In his seven years on Capitol Hill, Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., has become known in some circles as a founding father of Congress’ burgeoning marijuana movement. The young (39), wealthy and openly gay congressman from Boulder, who’s been dubbed “Mr. Cannabis” by some in the pot industry, is the man behind a bill that would essentially decriminalize the drug nationwide, making him among a handful of legislators on the front lines of the push for federal marijuana reform.

A Penn State law student and Youtube Pokemon master was arrested and charged with eight felony counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver following multiple controlled marijuana buys facilitated by the State College Police Department, resulting in the student’s ban from the Lewis Katz Law Building.