Global Ganja Report

Copenhagen's city council voted on Nov. 17 to empower its social affairs committee to draw up a detailed plan to legalize cannabis. If the plan is approved by Denmark's new left-of-center parliament next year, the city could become the first to legalize the herb—rather than simply tolerate it, as police do in the Netherlands. Under the concept, approved by a vote of 39-9, the city would grant licenses to individual growers, and city-owned shops would then sell their crop to the public.

"We are thinking of perhaps 30 to 40 public sales houses, where the people aren't interested in selling you more, they're interested in you," Mikkel Warming, the official in charge of social affairs on the Copenhagen city council told GlobalPost. "Who is it better for youngsters to buy marijuana from? A drug pusher, who wants them to use more, who wants them to buy hard drugs, or a civil servant?"

Global Post also spoke to a dreadlocked Cuban named Israel in Christiania,  Copenhagen's  self-declared "free town" squatter community. He responded enthusiastically to the news: "I will grow it! I've got this big bag of seeds." (Global Post, Dec. 1; Drug War Chronicle, Nov. 21)