Germany is to legalise cannabis for medicinal purposes early next year, the health minister said on Tuesday.

"Our goal is that seriously ill patients are treated in the best possible way," said Hermann Groehe, who will present draft legislation to the German cabinet on Wednesday.

Netherlands Based on rising demand, Bedrocan, the sole remaining producer of medicinal cannabis in Europe, tripled its production with the opening of a new production facility in 2015. Nevertheless, the company cannot supply Europe’s cannabis patients single-handedly.

Nicola Sturgeon has said she would back decriminalising cannabis for medicinal use.

The First Minister said there was a “specific case” for relaxing the laws to treat people with conditions such as multiple sclerosis but reaction to her announcement split an audience of around 150 activists in Dundee’s Queen’s Hotel.

A wide range of topics were covered in the hour long question and answer session, with the SNP leader making a firm commitment to building a trauma centre in Dundee and saying she would “love” to implement Frank’s Law, although she stopped short of committing herself to a fairer care system.

London would be “a happier place” if people were allowed to take drugs with impunity, a mayoral candidate claimed today. 

Self-confessed hippy Lee Harris, 79, joined the race for City Hall to campaign for the legalisation of the drug as party CISTA’s (Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol) candidate.

The grandfather-of-three, who is just three months shy of his 80th birthday, owns a “head shop” on Portobello Road called Alchemy, and attended the first rally to legalise cannabis in Hyde Park almost 50 years ago.

Who is Lee Harris and what are his ideas for London?

And ahead of next week’s mayoral election, Mr Harris told the Standard: “London would be a happier place if cannabis was legalised. If people smoke cannabis, they will drink less. 

Chief inspector of prisons attributes deaths, serious illness and self-harm to cannabis substitutes ‘spice’ and ‘black mamba’.

Synthetic cannabis is having a “devastating impact” in British prisons and making it difficult for normal life to continue in some facilities, the chief inspector of prisons has said.

Sold as “spice” and “black mamba”, synthetic cannabis has been blamed for deaths, serious illness and episodes of self-harm among inmates, and some prison officers have reported falling ill from exposure to the fumes.

MGC Pharmaceuticals has bought a Czech-based association so it can rise new strains of medicinal cannabis and boost production.

A brief time ago, a shares were adult some-more than 7% to $0.06.

MGC, that skeleton to grow medical cannabis in Australia, is shopping adult to 80% of Panax by providing Euros 700,000 ($A1.03 million) for handling costs and by arising adult to Euros 800,000 ($A1.18 million) in shares.

“Our merger of Panax significantly strengthens MGC Pharma’s medical cannabis investigate and prolongation capabilities,” says Nativ Segev, co-founder and handling executive of MGC Pharma.

The Dutch supreme court has ordered a retrial of the owner of what was the country’s biggest cannabis cafe, saying a lower court ruling clearing him of criminal charges was not properly motivated.

Meddie W was found not guilty of most of the charges against him by Amsterdam’s appeal court in 2014, when judges said he was not a member of a criminal organisation, and did not have to pay a fine.

The café in Terneuzen was closed by the town’s mayor in 2007 because it broke government rules on soft drug sales. At its height, the Checkpoint cafe was said to be serving up to 3,000 clients and processing 10 kg of marijuana a day.

A roundup of various movement in cannabis legalization in Europe.

While in the Americas in the last few years we have seen several waves of liberal reforms in countries like the USA, Canada, Chile, and Uruguay, we rarely hear similar news concerning European countries. But cannabis legalization is also winning support slowly in European countries other than the Netherlands Spain and Portugal.

In the UK last month, Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb raised a bill for decriminalization of cannabis – a second hearing will take place on May.

The Canadian government last week announced that cannabis will be legalised and regulated from spring next year.

George Murkin, of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, says that it's time the UK followed suit.

Who should control the production and supply of drugs : Governments or gangsters? That’s the choice that politicians face – there’s no third option in which drugs don’t exist. Unlike the UK, Canada has recognised this reality.

The country’s health minister announced last week that the Canadian­ government will bring the cannabis trade under their control, by legalising and regulating it in spring next year.

Final judgement On 6 April 2016, the Third Division of the Federal Administrative Court reached a landmark decision which is of crucial importance to cannabis patients: it issued a permit to a 52-year-old MS patient to grow cannabis at home. More on the legally binding decision and the background to the approval of cannabis cultivation here.