Ms Zeng speaks quietly, almost in a whisper, with a strong Chinese accent. How long have you been having trouble sleeping, she asks her customer.

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.

It all began when Yali was just four months old. The tiny boy squirmed with pain as his muscles went into spasm.

He suffered the epileptic fits for years—sometimes several times a day—and was forced to wear a crash helmet to stop him from injuring himself.

His parents were in a constant state of worry and his two brothers felt neglected. “The illness took over our entire life,” says his mother, Yael Bracha.

Today, Yali is seven years old and no longer suffers the epileptic fits that tortured him for so long. His family says that’s thanks to a drug that is illegal in many parts of the world: cannabis, or marijuana.

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.

Medicinal cannabis is controversial, in Germany there are many caveats. In Israel, more than 20,000 patients receive such products - including children.

It started when Jali was four months old. The boy squirmed under convulsions, muscle twitching. The epileptic seizures occurred in the following years repeatedly, often several times a day. In order not to get hurt, the child was wearing a helmet. The parents lived in constant worry, the two brothers felt neglected. "The disease had determined our lives," says mother Jael Bracha.

It started when Jali was four months old. The boy squirmed under convulsions, muscle twitching. The epileptic seizures occurred in the following years repeatedly, often several times a day. In order not to get hurt, the child was wearing a helmet. The parents lived in constant worry, the two brothers felt neglected. "The disease has determined our lives," says mother Jael Bracha.

Today Jali is seven years old - and symptom-free. He owes this apparently to an agent that is illegal and controversial everywhere in many places: cannabis. Three times a day Jali gets several drops that contain the active ingredients tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). Since the start of therapy he had not a single attack more, says the mother.

Almost three million Germans regularly smoke marijuana, making its legalisation an issue of widespread interest. Activists, expert lawyers in Criminal Law and some politicians are beginning to demand its regulation.

In Germany some three million citizens recognise smoking cannabis regularly, almost five times more than those who report only having tried it. It is still illegal to consume it in the country, so one of marijuana lovers' struggles in the coming years is going to be its regulation.

The purity and potency of illegal drugs is Europe is on the rise, according to a new report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). In its annual analysis of European drug trends, the EMCDDA also found that heroin use was in decline, that London's sewers had the highest concentration of cocaine among all European capitals, and that two new psychoactive substances hit the market every week.

European Union countries are unlikely to legalize marijuana any time soon as some parts of the United States have done recently, EU drug monitoring agency chief Wolfgang Gotz said on Thursday.

He did not spell out why he expected no corresponding EU moves. But in a statement, his agency said a key finding in its latest annual report was a "marked rise in the potency and purity of Europe's most commonly used illicit drugs, fuelling concerns for the health of users who, wittingly or unwittingly, may be consuming stronger products".

It also pointed out an increase in the numbers of cannabis-related health emergencies in Europe between 2008 and 2012.

Time was when most life insurers had no underwriting policy regarding an applicant’s use of marijuana. But that’s no longer the case.

According to a survey by Munich American Reassurance, 29 percent of life insurers with an underwriting policy in place classify marijuana users as non-smokers. The survey is based on on-site interviews of nearly 150 underwriters. They were attending the April annual meeting of the Association of Home Office Underwriters in Washington, D.C.

Of the life carriers represented in the survey, just one in five have no official underwriting policy in place for marijuana users, according to the Atlanta business unit of Munich Re.