Drug prohibition and the criminalisation of people who use those drugs might seem like it's been around forever but most Australian drug laws are relatively new.

This brief acccount of the history of Australian drug laws was written by NSW lawyer Steve Bolt in 2010 and is adapted from text originally published in Hot Topics: legal issues in plain language, No. 59 Drugs and the Law published by the Legal Information Access Centre (LIAC).

A new survey of 219 PatientsLikeMe members has found that patients with certain conditions who use medical marijuana believe it is the best available treatment for them, with fewer side effects than other options and few risks. The survey, conducted in June 2015, is among the first to gauge patient perceptions about the benefits and risks of medical marijuana and their level of willingness to recommend its use.

Thinking of going to Amsterdam to get stoned? Think again. While "coffee shops" still sell all manner of legal ways to get ripped, the law was changed two years ago so that only residents of the Netherlands can legally purchase marijuana in these cafes.

How about feeding pigeons in San Francisco or carrying your shopping in a plastic bag in Rwanda? Sounds harmless but both those acts are actually prohibited.

In Florence, Italy, it is an offence to sit and eat on the steps of major churches and public buildings. 

Industrial Hemp Association SA spokeswoman Ruth Trigg, with hemp products, and Greens MP Tammy Franks, holding a block of hempcrete.

LEGALISING cannabis farms to make clothes, building materials and beauty products could be part of the solution to South Australia’s looming post-Holden manufacturing crisis, a hemp industry expert and state politician say.

The newly formed Industrial Hemp Association of SA and Greens MLC Tammy Franks say hemp farms would create new jobs and inject much-needed cash into the state’s economy.

Hemp is a form of cannabis. However, it only contains 1 per cent THC — the chemical responsible for the “high” people feel when smoking marijuana, which contains about 5 to 20 per cent THC.

Police say more than $6 million worth of cannabis was pulled off the streets when they charged six people and seized more than 900 plants from houses across the ACT. 

Raids of eight rental properties uncovered the most sophisticated grow house network in the capital's history and disrupted a highly sophisticated drug syndicate that had operated in the ACT for up to six months, ACT Policing said. 

A cannabis crop seized from a Kaleen grow house.Photo: ACT Policing

With drug laws changing all the time, it’s hard for police sniffer dogs to keep up with what they’re supposed to find and what they aren’t. That’s why police forces are turning to insects to sniff out narcotics.

An odd scientific paper in PLoS One today details the very first attempts to get insects to become drug sniffers. The researchers tested three insects — the grapevine moth, the hissing cockroach and the western honeybee — just to assess how well they could differentiate the smell of one substance from another. The bees won, because their antennae make great “biosensors”, the researchers report.

Evidence is mounting that moderate coffee intake may protect us from a range of diseases, and even increase life span.

So is it OK to be addicted to coffee? 

In March this year, after a project that lasted just shy of two decades, scientists at Japan's National Cancer Centre released some intriguing results.

Their study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, tracked the lives – and sometimes deaths – of more than  90,000 people. Its conclusion was remarkable: "The habitual intake of coffee is associated with lower risk of total mortality and three leading causes of death in Japan."

Perhaps as befits a godfather of the Italian-Australian Mafia, Frank Barbaro was, in 2003, attending a funeral every fortnight.

"Frank Barbaro was prepared to travel very long distances to attend such gatherings,"  were the dry words of a 2003 joint-police report into the state of the Mafia in Australia.

"These attendances at funerals of [Italian Organised Crime] and family connected associates related to matters of respect, and presented networking opportunities."

Barbaro, a Griffith, NSW-based scion of one of the pre-eminent families of the Calabrian-Mafia, apparently styled himself as the glue that stuck the Australian Mafia together.

ISRAELI researchers are leading the world in highlighting the medical benefits of marijuana.

That was the message from journalist Helen Kapalos who spoke last Sunday night at an event on the topic hosted by Magen David Adom and the Zionist Council of Victoria.

She has recently interviewed doctors, patients and researchers in Australia, Israel and across the globe for a documentary that is expected to be screened later this year.

“This feels like the most important thing that I have ever done in my life,” Kapalos told the more than 200-strong crowd.

The journalist spoke about the largest human studies that are being undertaken in Israel, the regulated medical marijuana market in Israel and the black market for cannabis oil in Australia.