PSNI detectives working on an international crackdown on a ‘skunk’ cannabis trafficking racket have arrested a suspect in England as part of the long-running probe.

Police have warned that sinsemilla, which is known as ‘skunk’ on the streets, is particularly dangerous because it can significantly increase users’ chances of suffering a psychotic episode.

Detectives from Reactive and Organised Crime Branch arrested a 20-year-old man in Birmingham on Tuesday evening. The suspect, who is the 18th person to be detained so far, with 12 people charged to date, is being brought to Northern Ireland for questioning

The regional arm of a fledgling political party campaigning for the decriminalisation of cannabis has been fined for breaches of electoral regulations.

CISTA – Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol – was fined £3250 by the Electoral Commission for failing to provide any financial returns.

The party ran four candidates in Northern Ireland in May’s general election.

According to the electoral watchdog, CISTA failed to submit quarterly donations and loans reports, before and after the election, along with campaign expenditure returns.

Bob Posner of the Electoral Commission said: "Political parties have a legal responsibility to submit their financial returns.

THE Cork boy who had to learn to walk and talk again after an epileptic seizure will travel to the US tomorrow for a year of treatment.
Little Tristan Forde, who will turn two years old on St Stephen’s Day and who suffers 20 seizures a day, will watch his big brother Oscar open his Santa presents on Christmas Day on Facetime. And mum Yvonne, who is heading to Colorado with him, says Tristan will also use social media to share his birthday on St Stephen’s morning with three-year-old Oscar and dad John. Last night, the family hosted a gathering in the Parkway Hotel in Dunmanway for everyone who have helped the family raise funds for the trip before Tristan and his mum depart from Cork airport early tomorrow.

ome cannabis users caught by police may not be prosecuted and will receive an on-the-spot recorded warning instead.

Police Scotland will introduce the system in January to deal with low-level crimes.

At the moment, such crimes are normally reported by police to prosecutors and do not end up in court. 

The majority of those caught with cannabis, and perpetrators of serious crime, would be dealt with as before.

The recorded police warning is a revision of the formal adult warning scheme and would be issued by individual officers.

Officers will determine if a warning is appropriate, or if another course of action such as a fixed-penalty notice should be issued.

The complex politics of cannabis make for some very strange bedfellows, and the latest case is no exception. The United States Drug Enforcement Administration approved the New Jersey-based organization Catalent to receive imported cannabis for research purposes.

Catalent Pharma Solutions, which is classified as a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO), is based out of Somerset, New Jersey, but the site it registered with the DEA is in Kansas City, Missouri. The Federal Notice released by the Administration states:

Amazon is developing a marijuana-themed family dramedy, starring Margaret Cho, Variety has learned.

Titled “Highland,” the hourlong project in contention at Amazon Prime follows Margaret Cho, who after court-ordered rehab gets a chance to start over, but has to move in with her dysfunctional family who now runs a pot dispensary.

Co-produced by Tomorrow Studios and Amazon Studios, “Highland” hails from writer Liz Sarnoff (“Deadwood,” “Lost,” “Alcatraz”).

Illegal marijuana trade saves a local lower division stadium from descending into squalor.

At Goal91 World Headquarters here in Colorado, we live in one of the few places in the world where marijuana is legalized. And, no, we do not roll one up every day at a certain time in the afternoon. We are professionals and, besides, we have other ways of getting our creative juices flowing.

That said, we do see that the benefits of legalized marijuana range from increased tax revenues to increased White Castle orders. On the flip side, it looks like our brothers from another national mother over in the U.K. have found that the criminalization of marijuana can have benefits as well.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush announced a slight shift in his position on marijuana laws on Friday.

“It’s one thing to say we should have decriminalization of marijuana. I support that,” the former Florida governor said in an interview with Joe Mathieu of Boston’s WBZ NewsRadio. Bush had not previously endorsed a removal of criminal penalties for cannabis possession.

The Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London issued a press release on 27th November claiming that its latest study shows cannabis causes damage to the corpus callosum.  This was widely reported across the world and many publications extended what was already an inaccurate claim into saying that this “damage” was a cause of psychosis.