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An Ontario judge has struck down key aspects of Canada’s marijuana laws, triggering a 90-day countdown when growing, possessing or smoking pot will become legal.

"At least 12,000 children have lost one or both of their parents," said Gustavo de la Rosa, an official from Mexico's human rights commission. Those motherless and fatherless children, said de la Rosa, are a lasting and tragic legacy of Mexico's drug prohibition war. After witnessing the execution of a parent, the children -- even if physically uninjured themselves -- face a lifetime of emotional scarring.

With a Supreme Court of Canada case looming this summer that could decide its future, Vancouver's safe-injection drug site has received an extra shot in the arm from a new report that says it has helped reduce the number of fatal overdoses in the city by 35 per cent. The report, compiled by Canadian scientists from the Urban Health Research Initiative, the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and St. Paul's Hospital, goes on to argue that Vancouver's Insite - the country's first safe-injection facility - should be replicated in other North American cities where drug use is a common problem.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington is urging state senators to ignore Gov. Chris Gregoire's threat to veto a bill that would set up a regulated medical marijuana dispensary system. The House and Senate have passed legislation to license dispensaries. After a warning from federal prosecutors of arrest liability for employees who break federal law, Gregoire said she'd veto legislation that requires state workers to implement a licensing system.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer has vetoed a Republican bill that would have repealed the state's voter-approved medical marijuana law. Schweitzer vetoed the bill along with several others he called "frivolous, unconstitutional or in direct contradiction to the expressed will of the people of Montana." Voters in 2004 overwhelmingly approved the use of medical marijuana.