Nicola Sturgeon has said she would back decriminalising cannabis for medicinal use.

The First Minister said there was a “specific case” for relaxing the laws to treat people with conditions such as multiple sclerosis but reaction to her announcement split an audience of around 150 activists in Dundee’s Queen’s Hotel.

A wide range of topics were covered in the hour long question and answer session, with the SNP leader making a firm commitment to building a trauma centre in Dundee and saying she would “love” to implement Frank’s Law, although she stopped short of committing herself to a fairer care system.

London would be “a happier place” if people were allowed to take drugs with impunity, a mayoral candidate claimed today. 

Self-confessed hippy Lee Harris, 79, joined the race for City Hall to campaign for the legalisation of the drug as party CISTA’s (Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol) candidate.

The grandfather-of-three, who is just three months shy of his 80th birthday, owns a “head shop” on Portobello Road called Alchemy, and attended the first rally to legalise cannabis in Hyde Park almost 50 years ago.

Who is Lee Harris and what are his ideas for London?

And ahead of next week’s mayoral election, Mr Harris told the Standard: “London would be a happier place if cannabis was legalised. If people smoke cannabis, they will drink less. 

Chief inspector of prisons attributes deaths, serious illness and self-harm to cannabis substitutes ‘spice’ and ‘black mamba’.

Synthetic cannabis is having a “devastating impact” in British prisons and making it difficult for normal life to continue in some facilities, the chief inspector of prisons has said.

Sold as “spice” and “black mamba”, synthetic cannabis has been blamed for deaths, serious illness and episodes of self-harm among inmates, and some prison officers have reported falling ill from exposure to the fumes.

“This is delicious, Roz Bielski says, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. “Like eating a cloud. This is the kind of food I’d picture eating in heaven.”

It is just after 10am on a sunny Sunday morning in Denver’s Highlands. Clusters of smart churchgoers saunter past the windows of the restaurant; an impossibly healthy-looking young couple follow, pedalling up the hill with yoga mats slung over their shoulders. Then the peace is cracked by a cackle. Roz, a wealthy 62-year-old from New York who looks at least 10 years younger, breaks down into girlish giggles as she passes a large slice of sponge tart to her twentysomething daughter, Rachel. “Look, darling, I’m your biggest flan,” she guffaws, bent double with laughter as crumbs fly from her mouth. “YOUR BIGGEST FLAN!”

Seven days until the London mayoral election, and £200 million has just entered the equation. Lee Harris, CISTA’s mayoral candidate, has put on the table an argument that is unlikely to leave Londoners indifferent: in a video posted on taxbonanza.london, Harris states that London could accumulate up to £200m in tax revenue on cannabis if the Class B drug was to be decriminalised.

A roundup of various movement in cannabis legalization in Europe.

While in the Americas in the last few years we have seen several waves of liberal reforms in countries like the USA, Canada, Chile, and Uruguay, we rarely hear similar news concerning European countries. But cannabis legalization is also winning support slowly in European countries other than the Netherlands Spain and Portugal.

In the UK last month, Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb raised a bill for decriminalization of cannabis – a second hearing will take place on May.

The Canadian government last week announced that cannabis will be legalised and regulated from spring next year.

George Murkin, of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, says that it's time the UK followed suit.

Who should control the production and supply of drugs : Governments or gangsters? That’s the choice that politicians face – there’s no third option in which drugs don’t exist. Unlike the UK, Canada has recognised this reality.

The country’s health minister announced last week that the Canadian­ government will bring the cannabis trade under their control, by legalising and regulating it in spring next year.

On the final day on UNGASS 2016, the UK’s Transform Drug Policy Foundation brought their Anyone’s Child campaign to a packed conference room at the UN.

In stark contrast to an event they were due to be involved in earlier in the day – ‘Drug Policy, Dirty Money, and Development: Why the UNGASS should care about the Panama Papers’ – which had to be called off after only a handful of people (myself included) managed to get through the police barriers to attend, this deeply emotional event was so popular that many attendees ended up sat on the floor, or stood around the edges of the room.

As UNGASS draws to a close over in New York City, The Guardian have published a bold editorial on cannabis use and psychosis.

Drugs policy in the UK is not actually made in smoke-filled rooms but it might as well be. The mixture of befuddled optimism with a lack of urgency that characterises official thinking about cannabis has had dangerous results.

Fortune takes a look at the influencers on 4/20. 

America’s marijuana industry has bloomed in recent years with voters in more and more states voting to legalize pot in some form as public opinion on the drug seems to evolve with each generation.