It’s a scorching day in Denver. You’re at the annual Great American Beer Festival, about to end the parched torment of your mouth with a cool, refreshing first sip of craft beer. It touches your lips and you pull back… what the heck? It tastes like weed! Is this just a particularly skunky brew, or did you just get a taste of a bold new fusion between beer and cannabis?

For the first time in Germany, a court has allowed a patient to cultivate their own cannabis for medicinal purposes. The 53-year-old man suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS).

Germany's Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) confirmed on Sunday that the patient from Mannheim, southwestern Germany, will be allowed to grow a maximum of 130 cannabis plants a year in his bathroom. The cannabis is strictly for personal use, a spokesperson said.

With memories of the Global Medicinal Cannabis Summit: Advancements in the Age of Cannabis still fresh in our minds, VolteFace has been particularly fortunate to receive the following in-depth review of the event – penned by Dr Callum Swift, who graduated with an MA in Neuroscience from Trinity College, Dublin.

More and more people are purchasing cannabis in Germany. The country, which only allows the use of medical marijuana for people suffering with chronic illnesses, saw a spike in weed sales in the first half of 2016 compared with the amount of marijuana purchased by patients in the first six months of 2015, according to a statement released by the Federal Ministry of Health, The Local reported Friday.

This comes as Left Party marijuana advocates are  pushing the German parliament, known as the Bundestag, to approve a new law Health Minister Hermann Gröhe proposed in May that would legalize medical marijuana for all medicinal purposes, chronic or not. 

While highly regulated, the amount of medicinal cannabis sold by German pharmacies has almost doubled in just one year. The Federal Ministry of Health has disclosed numbers following an inquiry request from Left Party.

German pharmacies are selling more and more medicinal cannabis to patients.

According to Germany's Federal Ministry of Health, sales have risen from 33.8 kilograms in the first six months of 2015 to 61.8 kilograms in the first six months 2016. The numbers were disclosed following a parliamentary letter of enquiry from the Left Party.

The Government said it was unable to provide a reason for the rise. Only 647 people in Germany have an allowance to purchase medicinal cannabis flowers and extract from pharmacies.

Berlin will vote for a brand new state Parliament and a brand new mayor on Sunday, and for the primary time ever, cannabis is enjoying a task within the marketing campaign.

The news that Monsanto is being bought by Bayer probably won’t be well received in the cannabis sector. The deal brings together two research powerhouses that, reportedly, have long eyed cannabis as a possible new business. The worry is that the combined firm will have the financial and political influence to do to cannabis what it has already done to corn, tobacco, and other cash crops—namely, use pricy patented cannabis seeds (Roundup Ready Blue Dream, anyone?) that favor large-scale operators and rigidly control how all cannabis farmers farm. The merger, in other words, could be the first step toward Big Cannabis.

Despite government budgets in European countries being stretched to the limit, newly released data show that Germany and Austria have continued to spend billions of euros annually on cannabis prohibition.

The German federal government is plowing €5.2 billion to €6.1 billion each year into repressive anti-drug measures, with the lion’s share focused on cannabis, according to data released by the country’s Left party. Charges for selling or growing cannabis make up nearly three-quarters of all registered drug offenses in the country of 80 million residents.

Whether cannabis in a given jurisdiction is fully legal, strictly prohibited, or anything in between, cannabis supporters and opponents are unanimous on one thing: Herbs don’t belong in the hands of children. For medical cannabis patients in Germany who are parents, that means an obligation to store medicine in place that kids can’t get to it. Under the country’s narcotics security rules, patients with a medical card must keep the cannabis they buy at the pharmacy in a mini-safe at home.

If you’ve been following drug policy developments in recent months, you will no doubt have heard that Germany is on the brink of legalising medical cannabis.

The details of the new law – which was presented to parliament in July, and is expected to come into force by the end of the year – have been discussed at length in the press. Cannabis will, for the first time, be covered by public health insurance, patients will be able to obtain their cannabis on prescription from a pharmacy, and those who wish to take advantage of the new system will (according to some reports) be required to first obtain a letter from their physician stating that cannabis is a last resort.