A huge £100,000 cannabis factory has been found - directly behind a main police station.

The brazen set-up included nearly 150 plants on a fourth floor flat and was discovered by officers after growing virtually under their noses - just yards from their base.

Two men were arrested after cops executed a warrant in Plymouth, Devon, directly behind the city's main Charles Cross police station.

They uncovered three rooms full of fully grown cannabis plants and seized 146 suspected cannabis plants, worth an estimated £60,000.

MPs value the views of constituents and expert opinion more highly than evidence from randomised controlled trials, a new survey has found. However, the majority of the 104 Labour and Conservative MPs from the previous parliament who were questioned support the idea of using randomised controlled trials to evaluate policies and don’t believe they are too expensive.

Hundreds of people are expected to go to the event in Fallowfield on Sunday Hundreds of people are expected to go to the event in Fallowfield on Sunday An annual festival celebrating cannabis is set to take place in a Manchester park again next weekend. Hundreds of people are expected to go to the ‘420’ event at Platt Fields Park in Fallowfield on Sunday - as part of a series of worldwide events which campaign for the legalisation of marijuana. Around 500 people went to the festival last year - with police on patrol making no arrests despite participants openly smoking cannabis. The Platt Fields Park event is organised by Manchester pro-cannabis groups Mannijuana and the Greater Manchester Cannabis Club.

Despite the headline, I’m a proponent of crowdfunding and believe it can bring innovative ideas to market. Fundamentally, I feel that new forms of financing provide additional access to much-needed capital and bring healthy competition to the lender market, benefits that all entrepreneurs and inventors can appreciate.

WHITEHALL's former chief drug adviser has called for Scotland to legalise cannabis and ecstasy as medicines.

Professor David Nutt - sacked by the last UK Labour government after saying some drugs were less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco - has long campaigned for decriminalisation.

Now, with other campaigners, Prof Nutt wants to see the SNP use its Westminster influence after next month's general election to push through reform north of the border on cannabis and MDMA, the scientific name of ecstasy.

A marijuana institute in Natick is trying to attract a new crop of students by offering them scholarship funds to cover a portion of their tuition fees.

From now until April 20 — or 4/20 — any new students who enroll at the Northeastern Institute of Cannabis will not only qualify for a $420 scholarship, they will also be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a full ride at the marijuana-centric learning center.

The initial deposit to take classes at the school is also being scaled back, from $700 to $420, in celebration of the number that bears symbolic meaning for marijuana users. The usual total cost of the program is $1,500.

Anti-legalization group Project SAM released a new video this week comparing marijuana’s recent rise to that of tobacco’s past ascents. The group released the video, above, in conjunction with the National Rx Abuse Summit and the affiliated SAM Marijuana Education Summit.

“I hope people realize that marijuana legalization is all about creating Big Tobacco 2.0: A massive industry that has to keep profits flowing by denying health harms and increasing addiction,” SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) president and legalization opponent Kevin Sabet told The Cannabist.

Internationally, drug policy is at a crossroads: the debate is shifting from a paradigm based on criminalising drug users, to a more public-health-oriented approach. But is this only a change in rhetoric, or a sign of real political reform? We asked activists who have been attending the CND for several years. 

If you have overwhelming evidence that something isn’t working, would you continue to do it? If I was running a business that was failing, and saw no signs of improvement, I would shut it down and try a new approach.

The evidence calling for an end to the failed war on drugs is clear – we should be treating drug use as a health issue not a criminal issue. The world needs a new approach to drug policy.

Drug drivers believe their abilities behind the wheel are not seriously impaired by taking substances such as cannabis, cocaine and MDMA

People who take drugs before getting behind the wheel of a car believe it is a “much more acceptable” thing to do than driving while drunk, according to a Government study.

Drug drivers believe their abilities behind the wheel are not seriously impaired by taking substances such as cannabis, cocaine and MDMA and that in any case they are unlikely to be stopped by police, the research found.

The scale of drug driving is difficult to calculate as statistics are not always recorded, but research suggests that levels are similar to drink driving.