IT is a decision which prompted an outcry by writers, musicians, poets and DJs and has caused thousands to sign a petition in protest.

Now drug and health experts have warned the move to effectively close Glasgow's much loved Arches venue - by suspending its late night licence and thereby closing its nightclub activities - risks taking the tackling of drugs "back to the 1980s", with venues now more likely to turn a blind eye to the issue in case they get shut down too.

David Cameron has hired Sunday Times columnist Camilla Cavendish to head-up his Downing Street policy unit.

The journalist, campaigner and author studied PPE at Oxford and worked as a management consultant before joining the Times in 2002. She won a Paul Foot award for campaigning journalism in 2008 in recognition of her investigation into closed family courts and moved to the Sunday Times in 2013.

Her recent columns have focused on the need to close bad hospitals, tackle the welfare bill and the need to ban trans fats. Most interestingly, in a June 2014 Sunday Times column, Cavendish focused on the need to legalise drugs, writing:

Like many Vietnamese children, Hien was brought to Britain for a life of modern slavery. He ended up in prison on cannabis offences. We report on the gangs expanding across the UK and efforts to help their victims

Hien was 10 when he arrived in Britain. He did not know where he was or where he had been. He knew only that he was here to work. Since he emerged from the back of a lorry after crossing from Calais seven years ago, his experience has been one of exploitation and misery. He has been a domestic slave, been trafficked into cannabis factories, been abused and beaten and was eventually prosecuted and sent to prison. It has been a life of terror, isolation and pain.

Investigators say they found 129 marijuana plants, heroin, about $25,000 in cash and approximately $26,000 in gold bullion.

SUFFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — Police say they arrested four people for a marijuana manufacturing operation after a narcotics search warrant was served at a Suffolk home.

Investigators say they found 129 marijuana plants, a significant amount of heroin and items related to the distribution of marijuana at the home located in the 2000 block of Meadow Country Road, Thursday.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that products which contain cannabidiol (CBD) cannot be sold as dietary supplements. The agency, however, left open the possibility that would it consider contrary evidence.

The FDA’s website provides questions and answers pertaining its policies on marijuana (link is attached below). The way the questions were written provides avenues for addressing the agency’s view and for showing that cannabis-derived products that contain cannabidiol can be sold as a dietary supplement.

FDA says you cannot introduce substances undergoing clinical testing in a dietary supplement

Did you know that the majority of police officers don’t get into the force to bust people for ten bags? While it might occasionally seem like that – especially if you had little else to do growing up bar smoking weed in lay-bys and cultivating your collection of stop-and-search forms – plenty of cops are tired of fighting the War on Drugs, a battle they know full well they’re never going to win.

In 2002, a group of American police who were fed up of making menial street arrests for petty drug offences set up LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), an organisation that aims to bring together law enforcement and criminal justice workers who support a system of regulation and control of drugs that currently remain illegal.

The University of Florida is moving forward with two state-funded research initiatives on low-THC medical marijuana systems lawmakers approved in 2014.

This week, the Florida Department of Health announced its approval of $1 million for a team led by UF Health Shands pediatric neurologist Dr. Paul Carney to treat up to 50 children who have drug resistant epilepsy with a minimal-THC content, cannabidiol-rich oral solution called Epidiolex.

That study will recruit participants in Gainesville and across the state at several other hospitals and focus on children ages 2-16 whose seizures have not been controlled by other anti-epileptic drugs.

A new drug developed at Lancaster University that may help to prevent the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease is to enter clinical trials.

The number of people with dementia is steadily increasing. Currently there are about 850,000 cases in the UK, with numbers expected to reach over a million by 2021. The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease. It begins when a protein called beta-amyloid forms senile plaques that start to clump together in the brain, damaging nerve cells and leading to memory loss and confusion.

London, UK, 19 May 2015: GW Pharmaceuticals plc (Nasdaq: GWPH, AIM: GWP, “GW,” “the Company” or “the Group”), a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing novel therapeutics from its proprietary cannabinoid product platform, announced that the Company has appointed Julian Gangolli as President, North America and is also relocating its Chief Executive Officer, Justin Gover, to the United States.