Cannabis will be upgraded to a Class B drug next year even though the head of the Government’s advisory body says that the change is neither warranted nor likely to achieve the desired effect.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, announced the reversal yesterday of the Government’s earlier decision to downgrade the drug. But under18s caught with it will not be treated any more harshly, to avoid criminalizing them.

Punishment for the over18s will increase from the existing “confiscate and warning” for a first offense to a possible penalty notice for disorder on a second offense followed by arrest and prosecution for a third offense.

MANTA, Ecuador: The scene at the Manta Ray Café, a mess hall here at the most prominent U.S. military outpost in South America, suggests all is normal.

A television tuned to Fox Sports beams in a golf tournament.

Ecuadorean contractors serve sloppy joes near refrigerators bulging with Dr Pepper and Gatorade. Air force personnel in jumpsuits preparing to board an Awacs surveillance plane leaf through dog-eared paperbacks.

But by next year, if President Rafael Correa gets his way, this base would be gone - and with it, one of the most festering sources of controversy in Washington's long war on drugs.

Newswise — As controversy swirls about proper clinical use of opioids and other potent pain medications, research reported at the American Pain Society annual meeting shows that, contrary to widespread beliefs, less than 3 percent of patients with no history of drug abuse who are prescribed opioids for chronic pain will show signs of possible drug abuse or dependence.

In his plenary session address, Srinivasa Raja, MD, professor of anesthesiology, Johns Hopkins University Medical School, urged clinicians and policy makers not to allow the small percentage of abused pain prescriptions to prevent legitimate pain patients from getting the care they need.