A man smokes marijuana during a gathering to welcome back marijuana advocate Marc Emery in Windsor, Ontario
A man smokes marijuana outside Windsor City Hall during a gathering to welcome back marijuana advocate Marc Emery (not seen) who is released from an American prison for selling marijuana seeds in the U.S., in Windsor, Ontario August 12, 2014. Emery jailed for five years in a U.S. federal prison for shipping marijuana seeds across the border returned to his homeland on Tuesday, as laws regulating the drug in both countries have slowly been relaxed. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

It is not only in North America that more states are decriminalising use and ownership of recreational marijuana.

On the same week that recreational marijuana became legal in Alaska, the Jamaican Parliament approved on Tuesday a bill that allowed residents to own a small amount of marijuana, also called ganja locally. Although cannabis has long been identified with Jamaica, its use has remained illegal over the decades, reports AFP.

Peter Bunting, national security minister, disclosed that efforts to decriminalise the use of weed goes 38 years back. By making ownership of a small amount of marijuana legal, it removes unneeded source of friction between Jamaicans and the local police and frees the youth from having criminal records for merely owning pot.

The new law states the small quantities of cannabis could be owned and used for religious, medical, scientific and therapeutic purposes. Bunting said the new law would pave the way for medical ganja and industrial hemp industries.

Because of marijuana being illegal for so many decades, followers of the Rastafarianism, the religion that dead Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley followed, were victimised. Bunting said that the religion used cannabis in its rituals.

Meanwhile, in Colorado – one of the three states where recreational marijuana is legal – a company plans to sell in New York edible marijuana products legally that are certified by Kosher, which means it was carried out by Rabbi Moshe Elefant from the Orthodox Union. The target date of sale is in 2016.

Rabbis said that the marijuana plant itself does not need a kosher certification, but because smoking cannabis for medical purpose is still illegal in New York, it needs to be sold as pills or food that are ingested, which needs Kosher certification for Orthodox Jews to use it.

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