• Raul Arboleda / AFP - Getty Images

    Youngsters smoke marijuana during a march for the legalization of cannabis in Medellin, Colombia on May 5, as part of the 2012 Global Marijuana March which is being held in hundreds of cities worldwide.

    Global Marijuana March calls for legalization of cannabis

    The Global Marijuana March goes by a number of different names including World Cannabis Day, Worldwide Marijuana March, Cannabis Liberation Day, Global Space Odyssey, Ganja Day, J Day, and Million Blunts March. The event got its start as the 5th Avenue Pot Parade in New York somewhere between 1970 and 1973, as there is some question as to when the first official march really was. Today more than 250 cities around the world participate in the event on the first Saturday in May in an effort to push for the legalization of cannabis.

  • Rick Bowmer / AP

    A man who would only be identified as 'Redeye' singing a rendition of Sublime's 'Two Joints' during karaoke night at the Cannabis Cafe in Portland, Ore., in a picture taken on May 5 and released today. The cafe has farmer's markets of donated weed-laden goodies, a weekly comedy show and even an employees' night. On Thursdays, it's karaoke. An ill-lit stage catches an occasional cloud of puffy white smoke blown from a pipe or a bong or a vaporizer.

    Free weed, free tunes: Ore. pot bar hosts karaoke

    AP reports: It's karaoke night at Portland's Cannabis Cafe, a combination of the bar from Cheers and a street-side pot palace in Amsterdam. It is perfectly legal in this smoky room for medical marijuana patients to burn, eat, rub, filter and roll marijuana.

    There are cancer patients, AIDS patients and sufferers of smashed vertebrae and pinched nerves. There are also those who find refuge under Oregon's "severe pain" allowance — tell a marijuana-friendly doctor you've got pain, and you've pretty much got weed. Continue reading.

  • Chris Hondros / Getty Images

    Staff Sgt. Dustin Shanahan of Susanville, California with U.S. Army's EOD demolition team carefully carries a powerful Taliban-planted bomb made from a mortar round and a rocket-propelled grenade before blowing it up to neutralize it October 8, 2010 in the village of Zoldag Mongah west of Kandahar. Shanahan is attached to the 1st Battalion, 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, the storied "Black Hearts" that won fame on D-Day and in other battles and are now spread out in the Taliban-infused badlands west of Kandahar.

    Chris Hondros / Getty Images

    Shanahan was called upon to defuse four different bombs aimed at American troops today.

    Defusing a Taliban bomb

    By Stokes Young, nbcnews.com

    Scary.

    It appears that the field to the right of Shanahan in the top picture is full of marijuana plants--not the first time we've seen a whole lot of cannabis in a picture from Afghanistan.

  • Bob Strong / Reuters

    Cpl Ryan Belgrave with the Canadian Army's 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group, walks through a field of marijuana plants during a patrol near the village of Salavat, in the Panjway district west of Kandahar August 4, 2010.

    A Canadian wades through a forest of Afghan cannabis

    In March, the United Nations said that Afghanistan had become the world's top cannabis supplier, and that the crops help fund the insurgency, according to Reuters:

    One of the main reasons cannabis is so widely grown, UNODC said, is because of its low labor costs and high returns. Three times cheaper to cultivate than opium, the net income from a hectare of cannabis is $3,341 compared to $2,005 for opium.

    "The entire process is a non-expensive, fast industrial process, which is indeed somewhat worrying," Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of UNODC in Afghanistan, told reporters in Kabul.

    "We have already enough problems with the opium so we don't want to see the cannabis taking over."

    Ironically, this soldier's Canadian homeland has also attracted attention from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, as a world leader in per capita marijuana consumption. According to a June, 2009 article from the CBC:

    In its 2007 report, the UN found that Canada led the industrialized world in marijuana use, at least when calculated as a percentage of population.

    In its 2009 report, Canada is cited as the leading supplier of ecstasy in North America as well as a major producer and shipper of methamphetamine for markets around the world. The report cites the growing influence of gangs — Asian gangs on the West Coast and outlaw motorcycle gangs in central Canada.

    The report says the Canadian-based trade in methamphetamine has grown so much since 2003 that by 2007, 83 per cent of all methamphetamine seized in Australia came from Canada. In Japan, the figure was 62 per cent.