US

The hardline drug policies adopted during the 1980s in the “war on drugs”, including mandatory minimum sentences for some drug-related crimes, has led to extremely high levels of incarceration in the country. The US has more than 2 million people in its jails – the second highest rate of incarceration per capita in the world – about half of whom were convicted of drugs-related crimes.

The National Narcotics Agency (BNN) has stepped up its campaign to encourage marijuana farmers to give up their work and start growing more sustainable crops.

BNN said that it would continue to expand its campaign to other places in the country. 

“We started the program in Aceh in 2015 and will continue by taking the program to other areas in Indonesia,” BNN spokesperson Slamet Pribadi told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

Pribadi said that the campaign in Aceh had begun to show success as farmers had started to grow regular crops and plants. 

Cannabis use is going mainstream in North America, but that's not the case everywhere. If you're travelling to any of these destinations, you'll want to consider a temporary hiatus from herb.

A British man jailed in Indonesia for possession of drugs has reportedly been released from prison.

Paul Beales was sentenced to four years in December 2012 in a case which involved three other Britons, one of whom is facing death by firing squad.

Beales was found guilty of illegal possession of cannabis after being arrested with Rachel Dougall and her partner Julian Ponder earlier that year in a sting operation against alleged drug traffickers.

They were held alongside Lindsay Sandiford, from Cheltenham, who was found with cocaine worth about £1.6 million as she arrived on the island three years ago.

This week’s best city stories from around the web talk about marijuana zones in California, a forgotten waterway under the streets of Auckland, a mushroom farm in Camden and mime-artist-assisted traffic control in Bogotá. We’d love to hear your responses to these stories, and any others you’ve read recently, both on Guardian Cities and elsewhere. Just share your thoughts in the comments below.

Pot city

The Denpasar District Court sentenced on Thursday Australian national Nicholas James Langan and his Indonesian friend Hanung Pekik Hermantoro to a one-year term of imprisonment for smoking marijuana. The sentence was lighter than the four-year prison term demanded by the prosecutor.

Both Langan and Hermanto were arrested on Batu Bolong beach in North Kuta in late January as they shared a marijuana joint. Police seized a used marijuana joint weighing 0.1 grams and 0.86 grams of marijuana wrapped in brown paper.

The court found them guilty of violating Article 127 of Law No. 35/2009 on narcotics.

Over the past few months, Indonesia made the headlines with the series of executions of people condemned for drug trafficking offences.  This has sparked much discussion around the world, with many activists and policy makers alike considering the use of capital punishment as a gross human rights violation, necessitating an urgent reform of national laws.

Earlier this year, Indonesia executed 14 people, including Bali Nine duo Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, for drug offences. President Joko Widodo portrayed the executions as the ultimate weapon in an expansive “war on drugs” deployed to protect the country’s young generation from an  alleged “national drug emergency”.

But his policy is harming the very people he claims he wishes to protect.

A problematic approach