I sit in a brightly lit doctors surgery in central Amsterdam. It’s clean, modern and pristine. A team of receptionists see to patients sitting waiting to my left. Sitting to my right is a UK pain patient who, for the sake of anonymity, we’re going to call Mr X. 

Mr X uses cannabis for his pain caused by spinal damage due to injuries sustained whilst working in the armed forces. He’s a UK citizen and he’s here to get a prescription he can’t get from his doctor at home in London.

Mr X is young, talkative and passionate about what he’s doing. He’s not just in it for himself either:

(AFP) – France and Canada have the highest percentage of 15-year-old pot smokers among 42 well-off nations surveyed by the World Health Organization, the UN agency said in a report Tuesday.

When it comes to policing marijuana, France is far from the most laid-back country in Europe, so the findings come as something of a surprise.

Amsterdam flaunts its cannabis cafes and Barcelona its private reefer clubs, but neither the Netherlands nor Spain were among the top eight nations in which teens admitted they had used cannabis in the last 30 days, according to the study, based on data from 2014.

Fifteen percent of 15-year-olds in France — slightly more boys than girls — said they had indulged, with Canada’s young stoners close behind.

A mix of excitement and tension was felt yesterday as leaders from 193 U.N. member States, International Organisations, NGOs and drug experts squeezed into a packed hall this morning in the Vienna International Centre to mark the opening of the 59th U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs.

Saturday 12th March – It feels like the first day of spring in York today. After a recent cold snap, the Sun is now shining in a cloudless eggshell sky, raising the temperature to a seasonably pleasant 15 degrees Celsius. Around the York Barbican, the old city walls are sprinkled with cheerful yellow daffodils, their colour mirrored by the bright lanyards worn by the delegates inside. It is day two of the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference, and the atmosphere in the auditorium can also be said to reflect that of the flowers outside. This is a party for whom smiling in the face of adversity comes naturally, a fortunate characteristic in their present political predicament.

The Lib Dems have adopted a plan legalise cannabis shops as their party policy. 

Their party wants to see:

• Licensed shops sell cannabis to over 18s
• The strength of cannabis regulated
• Smokers allowed to grow plants at home
• Plain packaging with health information

But how many people in Wales use cannabis or other drugs?

How many of us smoke cannabis?

6.1% of adults (under 59) in Wales say they smoked cannabis at least once last year.

Tommy Sheridan has launched a petition calling for cannabis to be legalised in the UK.

The former Solidarity MSP, launced the petition earlier, in a bid to legalise what he calls the  "non-criminal action" of using cannabis, and directing the money raised from taxing the drug into drug treatment programmes.

Only 98 people have signed his petition on change.org since the petition was launched yesterday.

The petition is called "Legalise, regulate, licence and tax cannabis. Drop the stupid 'war' on drugs. Wise up." and is directed at the UK Parliament.

On the site, calling for people to sign his petition, Tommy said: "The consumption of cannabis is a recreational choice not a criminal act.

In April 2016, the international community will convene for the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem (UNGASS). This event, held two years early due to the urgency of the drug situation and intensity of drug-related violence, presents an opportunity to question the fundamentals of international drug policy. Despite overwhelming evidence that a century-long quest to control human behaviour and drug markets through international treaties and national legislation has failed, there is little expectation of change. The vested interests in retaining the status quo are significant, with sclerosis legitimised through the recurrent exhortation to improve international co-operation.

Have you ever wondered why marijuana affects us the way it does? What is it that makes THC and CBD react with our bodies, healing and offering relief to the ill? What makes this plant such a diverse medicine, able to treat such a large number of vastly different conditions? 

If you had asked this question fifty years ago, there wouldn’t have been an answer for you to find. Unfortunately, the extraction methods available in the early 1900s made it difficult to determine which one of the 80+ cannabinoids found in cannabis was the psychoactive cannabinoid responsible for the effects of marijuana. 

The truth is, it’s only been in the last couple of decades that scientists have truly even begun to understand the ways cannabis works within our bodies. 

Almost 50 years ago The Times published one of the most famous editorials in the history of British newspapers. A few weeks before Mick Jagger was heavily fined thousands of pounds after a punitive trial for possession of cannabis. Conservative and middle-aged England thought he deserved it. But William Rees-Mogg, the then editor of The Times was unhappy. In a legendary leader he invoked Alexander Pope as he railed against the “primitive” impulse to “break a butterfly on a wheel”.

Marijuana is the world’s drug of choice. This is evident to travelers and entrepreneurs, as well as researchers parsing Erowid, the online drug encyclopedia. A group called Project Youth at the University of Amsterdam has just finished cataloguing all the personal testimonies on the site to get a snapshot of how people have been using drugs over the past decade and which drugs they’ve been using together. Turns out that cannabis plays well with others.