The Copenhagen City Council is pushing ahead with a proposal to decriminalise cannabis, and has set up a committee to investigate the best way to regulate the supply and distribution. The favoured option is for 30 or 40 cannabis shops controlled by the city in which adults may legally buy cannabis. By a margin of 39 votes to nine, the City Council decided to draw up a detailed outline of how the plan would work. Subsequently, the resulting proposal still has to be ratified by the Danish parliament, which has blocked similar movements in the past. But after the national elections in September 2011 the current parliament could support decriminalisation this time around.

The filming crew of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) traveled to California and attended the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in LA to find out what are the latest development of the battle for legal marijuana in the US. We interviewed activists from several organizations, asked questions about the chances of state level ballot initiatives, we even saw how people will use cannabis in the 21st Century. 

Health officials of the Basque Country, an autonomous region of Spain, announced that they will introduce a bill to regulate the "cultivation, sale and consumption" of hashish and marijuana. The bill, which will be presented to the regional parliament next year, was put forward on December 12, 2011, by regional health officials during the presentation of the regional addictions plan. Several media outlets broke the news as an intent to legalise cannabis use, while in fact the proposed legislation only aims to regulate cannabis user associations that cultivate for personal use.

Last week, Nobel laureates from Poland - Wislawa Szymborska and Lech Walesa called for change in the field of drug policy. The report made by the Global Commission on Drug Policy inspired the former President of Poland - Aleksander Kwaśniewski - to sign a letter with a statement that the global drug war has failed and the time for decriminalization, treatment and prevention has come.

In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais, the US Ambassador for Colombia said: "the issue presented itself several times in the last 20, 30 years, and it is now a question that is on the table, and what is always important in political debates is to analyze the options present."

An amendment on illegal narcotics possession law allows prosecutors to bypass courts in line with a “treat, not punish” approach to drug use.

The Portuguese drug decriminalisation and harm reduction model has been in place for a decade and is a proven success, but austerity measures may threaten drug treatment.