In a maddening show of spineless backsliding after 35 years of tolerance, the conservative government of the Netherlands seems hellbent on turning the clock back to a darker time in Dutch history -- a time when the cannabis trade was driven underground and people had to access the black market for marijuana.

And, of course, in our interconnected world, such a failure of leadership would reverberate internationally, according to expert observers.

"If tolerance ends or gets limited in the Netherlands, then politicians all over the world will say things like 'Tolerance failed in Holland,' and use that as an excuse to enforce their anti-cannabis propaganda, opinions and laws," well-known Dutch cannabis blogger Peter Lunk told Toke of the Town.

About half the cannabis sold in the Netherlands just got banned -- because it's too good. According to the Dutch government, that joint of White Widow you're smoking is just as bad as heroin or meth. And if they catch you smoking weed they think is "too good," they can throw you into drug rehab for it.

The Dutch have been a source of both exhilaration and exasperation with their hard-to-pin-down cannabis policies for the past 40 years. Often held up as a model of tolerance by those in less-permissive countries, they actually have some serious perception problems of their own.

He is 47 years old and, chances are, he lives somewhere on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast.

Under Health Canada’s medical marijuana program, he is approved to legally consume up to five grams a day of the pot he grows himself at home. Most likely, his general practitioner signed the forms he needed to get the drug.

And on average, he is a “he” — men in the program outnumber women by a ratio of about three to one.

As with a great number of medical marijuana patients, he uses the drug to treat severe arthritis, although he may suffer from other conditions.

Data obtained by the Ottawa Citizen through the Access to Information Act put this face to the typical medical marijuana patient for the first time, 10 years after the federal government — under pressure from a series of legal rulings — was forced to start allowing seriously ill Canadians to apply to use the drug.

The decision to crack down on medical pot establishments in the Golden State was a collective decision by four U.S. attorneys in California and not the result of any directive from Washington, according to a spokesman for California-based U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr.

Federal prosecutors launched an attack on medical marijuana shop owners last week, vowing to shutter state-licensed marijuana dispensaries regulated by local governments and threatening landlords with property seizures.

A Mexican military commander said Thursday that his soldiers discovered a record-busting marijuana plantation 120 hectares (nearly 300 acres) large in the state of Baja California.

"It is the largest marijuana plantation in Mexican history," General Alfonso Duarte, the commander of the military region based in the far north-western border city of Tijuana, told AFP.

Duarte said the plantation can produce 120 tons of marijuana, which he valued at nearly $160 million.

Den mexikanischen Behörden ist ein wichtiger Schlag gegen den Drogenhandel gelungen. In der Wüste nahe der US-Grenze stießen Soldaten auf ein riesiges Anbaugebiet für Marihuana. Die bis zu 2,5 Meter hohen Pflanzen hätten nach der Ernte mehr als 108 Millionen Euro eingebracht.

Soldaten haben in Mexiko die bisher größte Marihuana-Plantage in der Geschichte des Landes entdeckt. Über eine Fläche von knapp 120 Hektar erstreckt sich das Anbaugebiet im Bundesstaat Baja California an der Grenze zu den USA. Die Riesenplantage sei bereits am Dienstag gefunden worden, teilte das mexikanische Verteidigungsministerium am Donnerstag mit.