Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have found that the active ingredient in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, inhibits the formation of amyloid plaque, the primary pathological marker for Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, the study said, THC is "a considerably superior inhibitor of [amyloid plaque] aggregation" to several currently approved drugs for treating the disease.

If any nation wishes to consider a major liberalization of domestic drug policy, it has to also consider the international context. The reason for this is quite straightforward. Most nations have signed three UN drug control Conventions, including the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs which is the bedrock of the current international drug control system. David Bewley Taylor

In March 2008, four months from now, the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs will meet in Vienna to review the results of the drug policies over the past 10 years. It will be the first time that so-called prohibition drug policies that stipulated the eradication of the coca leaf, cannabis plant and the opium poppy will not be given a blank check treatment, but instead, be scrutinized for efficiency.

Drug policy chiefs have had few concrete successes in convincing the public or policymakers to retrench in the decades-long drug war. But when the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) held its 2007 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans recently there was the sense that its time - and place - were finally right.

Police in Amsterdam are complaining over new rules banning them from smoking cannabis while off duty.

Officers in the Dutch capital, famous for its liberal drugs laws, have been told they must set the public "a good moral example".

The ban, due to come into effect on January 1, will make the force the first in the Netherlands to bar officers from using drugs when not at work.