Durham Police Chief Commissioner says his force is no longer targeting small-scale farmers of the drug – are we edging closer to legalisation?

One maverick police commissioner is leading a charge against the prosecution of people who grow and smoke weed at home. Durham PCC Ron Hogg says that his force will no longer be going after "users and small-scale growers" and wants to see people arrested only if they’re being blatant about production.

PHOENIX — The smell of marijuana is no longer enough in Arizona for police to get a warrant and come busting down the door, the state Court of Appeals has ruled.

In a split decision, the judges acknowledged that the odor of the plant, whether fresh or freshly smoked, was enough to provide police with probable cause that a crime was taking place. And that provided the basis to go to a judge to seek permission to enter where the smell was coming from.

But Judge Peter Eckerstrom, writing for the majority, said that changed in 2010 when voters approved the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act.

Hemp has been described as a versatile crop used in the production of certain foods, body and hair care products, textiles, papers, plastics, and even construction. However, the cultivation of industrial hemp is currently prohibited in the United States and has been since the 1970s when all cannabis plants were classified as controlled substances. A recent study conducted at the University of Minnesota shows the genetic difference between hemp and marijuana.

VAIL — The temporary ban on retail marijuana in Vail could be permanent in a matter of weeks.

Just two weeks after the Vail Town Council passed yet another extension of a 2014 moratorium banning marijuana businesses, the council Tuesday night will consider the first reading of a permanent ban. That ban could be overturned by a future town council.

While 2012’s Amendment 64 legalized recreational use and sale of marijuana, the amendment gives towns and counties the ability to impose bans on retail operations. Several towns and counties have taken that step. Locally, retail operations are allowed in unincorporated Eagle County and the town of Eagle. Sales are allowed in Red Cliff, but there have been no applications there.

Willie Nelson, the outlaw country singer and Texas legend, predicts marijuana will be legal in all 50 states by the end of the decade.

Speaking to KSAT 12 reporter Paul Venema, Nelson cited the opportunity to make big bucks as the primary reason that the drug will be legalized.

Laws that legalize the recreational use of marijuana have been passed in Alaska, Washington, Colorado, Oregon and the District of Columbia, according to Governing.

Residents of Vancouver’s hip Mount Pleasant neighbourhood have found marijuana plants among the flowers and shrubs of at least two traffic circles, sparking local joy and a race between residents and police to harvest them.

“I think it represents a good sense of humour in the neighbourhood,” resident Stephen Tanner told CTV, adding such gardens are usually tended by locals.

Eric Lamond and several other residents said they have seen marijuana plants growing in the centre of traffic circles along Ontario Street in the past few months in what seems to be a random series of guerrilla gardening.

‘‘I love it. It’s beautiful, it’s a beautiful plant, we should all be enjoying it, right? It’s nature,” Lamond told CBC News.

A VALENCIA woman's entire flat was flooded with marijuana buds and cut hash after her toilet backflowed because her upstairs neighbour had blocked the pipes throwing his illicit haul down the lavatory.

Gloria, who rents a home on the C/ Mediterráneo in the city, said the man living above her had kept a huge cannabis farm and police went round to inspect after the smell of the drug gave the culprit away.

He refused to open the door to officers, and instead threw buds from several hundred plants and nearly a kilo of hash down the toilet and flushed it away.

The 30-year-old man fled the property before the police got inside.

Drug dealer caught after police discover stoned-looking SELFIE he took in front of his cannabis factory

This is the moment a dopey drug dealer sealed his fate after taking an incriminating selfie in front of his cannabis stash.  

The photo of a spaced-out Richard Edmunds, 25, giving the thumbs up for the camera was released after he admitted drugs charges in court.

The picture in which he inadvertently traps himself was one of several found by police showing off the stash of Edmunds and his housemate Joshua Langmead, alongside incriminating messages on six different mobile phones.

In my lifetime, the island nation of Jamaica, which gained its independence from Great Britain in 1962, has been one of the world’s most cannabis-friendly nations, both for locals and for tourists. While technically marijuana, or ganja as they call it in Jamaica, was until recently illegal, in fact marijuana and marijuana smoking was largely ignored by authorities, and one could not get through the airport at either Negril or Kingston without being offered marijuana by several local entrepreneurs, competing for your business.

I know because I accepted the hospitality of these “Welcome Wagon” connections on a couple of occasions, and found the product to be excellent, and the cost was a bargain, at least compared to high-quality home-grown marijuana in the US.

Police say a lush and thriving marijuana plant discovered sprouting up in traffic circle in Vancouver is harmless.

A number of robust cannabis plants were found nestled amongst other flowers and ornamental grasses in a public traffic circle near Vancouver’s residential Mt. Pleasant neighbourhood.

Sergeant Randy Fincham, a spokesperson for the Vancouver police department, said officers removed one of the plants for analysis, to see if it was male or female. Only female varieties of the marijuana plant have buds, and thus THC, the chemical responsible for marijuana’s high, Fincham said.