Residents and visitors to the city over the age of 21 can possess as much as 2oz (56g) of cannabis, and may grow a few plants at home. Buying and selling the drug remains illegal, as does smoking it in public.
Many countries are distancing themselves from the failed War on Drugs, by adopting drug policy reforms that are focusing on human rights, and public health.
The International Reporting Program traveled to Ukraine, Uganda and India to find out, and to document the human toll of the human rights crisis created by the lack of access to essential medicines.
An increasing number of Slovak non-governmental and ministerial experts have come to recognise the validity of evidence from abroad underpinning the success of non-punitive drug policy approaches in other parts of the European Union.
Reflecting on the UN's millennium development goals and moving forward to a post-2015 sustainable development goals model, there needs to be more focus in addressing harm reduction failures with people who inject drugs.
Women Drug mules made headlines in UK news throughout 2013 bringing to light misconceptions of drug mules and highlighting accounts of coercion and threats to transport drugs but also voluntarily involvement, motivated by poverty and financial difficulties.
The lack of access to essential medicines is partially due to the overemphasis put by the International Narcotics Control Board on tackling the illicit production, trafficking and uses of drugs, instead of paying greater attention to guarantee the availability to essential medicines.
The WHO has strongly and repeatedly recommended against international control, warning it would constitute a public health crisis in countries where no alternatives are available.
