In this week’s election in Pueblo County, Colo., voters were asked to weigh in on a number of proposals. With the exception of two issues, according to the Pueblo Chieftain, “all of them have something to do with marijuana.”

Together, they form the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Personal Use, whose Spanish acronym spells “SMART“, hoping the Supreme Court will rule in their favor on Wednesday.

The court’s decision could hasten efforts by Mexico’s states to change their drug laws, which have so far yet to advance beyond limited debate over the use of medical marijuana.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - For Mexico City anti-narcotics cop Nieto Lara, a decision by the country's Supreme Court that could eventually lead to the legalization of marijuana means only one thing: major cartels abandoning the drug and focussing on harder stuff.

Wednesday's landmark Supreme Court ruling would allow four people to grow and consume the plant for recreational use in a country ravaged by a decade of drug violence, but any nationwide legalization of marijuana is likely years away.

The battle in California to legalize recreational marijuana is heating up. An alliance of industry organizations and wealthy supporters, spearheaded by Napster co-founder and jet-setting billionaire Sean Parker, are looking to disrupt the cannabis industry just as Parker did in the music and technology industries. Sacramento political consultant Gale Kaufman and the capital political law firm Olson Hagel & Fishburn were engaged to draft the 2016 initiative.

The government is considering decriminalising the possession of a small amount of drugs like heroin, cannabis and cocaine.

NEARLY HALF OF people in Ireland are against the proposal to no longer make it a criminal offence for a person to possess a small amount of drugs for personal use, according to a new poll.

However, there is significantly stronger backing for the idea among men with 51% favouring the decriminalisation idea compared to 35% of women.

The findings of the Claire Byrne Live/Amárach Research poll show that 43% of all people favour decriminalisation, while 46% are against it. Eleven per cent said they don’t know.

Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that growing, possessing and smoking marijuana for recreation is legal under the right to freedom. The measure was approved in 4-1 vote on the five-justice panel, backing the argument that smoking marijuana is covered under the right of “free development of personality.”

Here’s a quick look at five countries where Marijuana is legal and what the law states:

Czech Republic

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has now moved forward with his support for cannabis, filing a bill to decriminalize pot and nix it from the government’s list of most dangerous drugs.

He submitted the bill, entitled Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2015, to the Senate on Wednesday, seeking to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act. The legislation would let all 50 states decide for themselves whether they want to legalize pot for recreational or medical use without federal intervention.

Local and state law enforcement nationwide sees weed as the least of its drug worries, a report from the Drug Enforcement Administration found -- even as the DEA itself sees marijuana as a "growing concern."

As part of the 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary, the DEA asked a sample of over 1,100 local and state law enforcement agencies what they perceived as their biggest drug threat. For the fifth year in a row, marijuana was ranked as the least of officers' worries. Only 6 percent of respondents reported weed as the largest threat -- the lowest portion since 2007.

An absurd status quo has held sway in Mexico, ever since the United States began to legalise marijuana, for medical, and, more recently, recreational use. The nation – encouraged by Washington – has some of the strictest drug laws in Latin America. 

But the vast majority of the marijuana it produces ends up in the US. So Mexican law enforcement officials – complying with the demands of their American counterparts – have been expending massive resources on preventing the growth and trafficking of a drug that is often, by the time it ends up being smoked within US borders, entirely legal.