It is finally dawning on some Canadian municipalities that there is no mechanism in place for the inspection of authorized medicinal cannabis growing facilities. How this issue is resolved might answer some of the larger questions surrounding how growing your own for personal use might be regulated in the future.

Speaking of the future, young people seem to be getting the "message" that their elders have avoided, and understand all to well that cannabis is "safer" than alcohol.

Finally, a seasoned stoner reflects back on over four decades of cannabis culture and cannabis prohibition in New York City.

An article by Simon Fraser University Criminology Professor Neil Boyd, in this week's Vancouver Sun newspaper welcomes another election this fall as that "will kill critical anti-crime legislation" including mandatory minimums for drug crime. "Any one who sells any amount of any illegal drug, and anyone who grows more than five marijuana plants will go to jail for a minimum term of six months. Who does this legislation target? User-dealers with addiction and mental health problems -- and marijuana growers who are neither predatory nor violent."

And from England this week, two cogent pieces in support of legalizing drugs. The first, by John Gray in last Sunday's Observer notes, "The war on drugs is a failed policy that has injured far more people than it has protected... The anti-drug crusade will go down as among the greatest follies of modern times... Though politicians like to pretend they embody a moral consensus, there is none on the morality of drug use." The problem? "It remains the case that without a change of mind in the leaders of rich countries, above all in the United States, the futile global crusade will continue."

In "Better World: Legalise Drugs", New Scientist author Clare Wilson says, "the war on drugs is making the world a much more dangerous place... The evidence suggests most of the problems stem not from drugs themselves, but from the fact that they are illegal. The obvious answer, then, is to make them legal." The problem with that? "Unfortunately, the idea that banning drugs is the best way to protect vulnerable people - especially children - has acquired a strong emotional grip, one that politicians are happy to exploit."