Should we regulate cannabis and, if so, how? While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, inspiration for answers can be found in the stories of communities that have dared to try something different. Catalonia, an autonomous region of Spain, has created health- and rights-based drug policy that not only reduces the harms of drugs, but also creates new opportunities for public health, security, economic growth, and a thriving civil society.

Industrial hemp farming has made a comeback in Spain where there has been a revival in its cultivation. Hemp already grew in the wild and had been farmed in many areas all over the world long before laws were passed to regulate its cultivation. For thousands of years, it was used for its nutritional and health-promoting properties, and as a raw material for the production of countless food, textile and medicinal products.

It's hard to know what to think about the Spanish government. On the one hand it is one of the most conservative, even repressive, administrations in Western Europe; just look at the plans it put forward last year to restrict abortion (plans which were themselves swiftly aborted), and the new 'ley mordaza' or gag law, which imposes severe restrictions on the right to protest (and which recently prompted a groundbreaking hologram protest in Madrid).

Cannabis News Network reports on the sudden launch of a crackdown on Barcelona Cannabis Social Clubs, initiated by the mayor of the Catalan capital Xavier Trias, seems to have backfired on him.

A medical marijuana extract shows considerable promise as a treatment for epilepsy in young people that could reduce seizures in children with severe epilepsy that usually do not respond to other treatments, according to a study by the Langone Comprenhensive Epilepsy Center at the University of New York ( USA) and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
 
The study is based on the use of cannabidiol extract, the main component of this plant and which, unlike the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), is not psychoactive, so it has no direct effect on the central nervous system or change its functions or perceptions.
 

The sudden launch of a crackdown on Barcelona Cannabis Social Clubs, initiated by the mayor of the Catalan capital Xavier Trias, seems to have backfired on him.

A report from Cannabis News Network on this remarkable situation is expected on Friday the 15th of May 2015!

Holograms for Freedom saw thousands of Spanish citizens take part in the world’s first hologram march in protest of Spain’s new ‘gag’ laws

Spain’s controversial Citizen Safety Law has been highly criticized for threatening the freedoms the Spanish people by criminalizing their right to demonstrate in front of public buildings. In response, earlier this month, protesters carried out a virtual march on the steps of the Spanish Parliament in Madrid:Holograms for Freedom saw thousands of ghostly figures projected in front of the government building in the first ever hologram protest.

David Mendoza with one of his children. (We promise we didn't go out of our way to choose the most saccharine, sympathetic photo—this was the only one Mendoza's people sent.) Courtesy of Laurie King

When we last checked in with pizzeria owner and former marijuana smuggler David Mendoza, he was stuck in prison in Fort Dix, New Jersey, trying to get transferred to a prison in Spain. That was in April of 2014, roughly five years after he'd been arrested in Guernica, extradited to the US, and sentenced in Seattle—and he wasn't having much luck.

A new study published by the journalPsychopharmacology, and conducted by researchers at the Universitat de València in Spain, has found that the body’s cannabinoid receptors play a vital role in the management of social interactions and aggressive behavior, and that administration of a cannabinoid receptor agonist significantly reduces aggression in animal models.

The study’s abstract explains that “This study was designed to examine the role of cannabinoid CB2r in social and aggressive behavior.”

The outlaw botanists who designed the marijuana Americans smoke and the money they didn't make doing it

Since almost everyone interviewed for this story is, or has been, a criminal, almost everyone long ago adopted pseudonyms. Some are no longer criminals, so don’t mind their real names being used. Some are no longer criminals, but still prefer to use their pseudonyms.