With its open-air marijuana stalls festooned in psychedelic colors and its freewheeling, self-governing structure, the Christiania neighborhood in Copenhagen has been for decades emblematic of Danish liberalism and tolerance.

On Friday morning, however, a symbol of hippie hedonism came crashing down - at least temporarily.

At about 9 a.m., hundreds of residents began dismantling the drug market on Pusher Street in the heart of the city, where men in masks usually peddle marijuana and hashish from stalls. Video footage showed residents hauling away plants and using saws, drills and bulldozers to demolish the stands. Signs saying "no photography allowed" were ripped down.

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Government politician says the health risks of cannabis are too high, but gets her facts wrong on live TV

There is mounting pressure on the government to follow in the footsteps of Uruguay and the US states of Colorado and Washington to legalise the production, sale and consumption of cannabis.

The South American country and US states are the first in the world to abandon the prohibition of the plant product that -according to the UN Office of Drugs and Crime - was used by more than 180 million people around the world in 2013. The legal, regulated sales of cannabis - the first of their kind in the world - began in Colorado on January 1.

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A groundbreaking 'consumption room' keeps drugs off the streets, with staff on hand to help victims. The next may open in Brighton

'We can't change people. People can change themselves, and we can be there when they want to' Ivan Christensen, drug worker

Maja Petersen, 38, a prostitute, could not wait a moment longer for her fix. She had made her way to Copenhagen's drug consumption room, hoping to inject there, away from public view and within sight of its nurses. But the room a place where addicts can use class A drugs free of fear of prosecution doesn't open its doors to the city's 8,000 addicts until 8.30am.

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the Location of Copenhagen's First Permanent Injection Room Has Been Found in the City's Vesterbro District

After years of political wrangling, Copenhagen City Council decided yesterday that a community centre on Istedgade in Vesterbro will be the site of Copenhagen's first permanent injection room.

The injection room will open in Mendenes Hjem in August 2013 but from this October a smaller temporary facility will open in a health clinic on the nearby square of Halmtorv.

The city's mayor for social affairs, Mikkel Warming (Enhedslisten), told journalists that the community centre was ideal.

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While Copenhagen City Council Pushes Ahead With a Plan to Allow The Sale of Marijuana, It Is Uncertain Whether Parliament Would Approve the Measure

The legalisation of marijuana in Copenhagen came a step closer after the City Council voted on Thursday to investigate ways to decriminalise the drug.

A committee has now been established to determine the best way to legalise the sale of hashish, with special stores owned by the council presenting itself as the preferred candidate.

The sale, consumption and cultivation of marijuana is illegal in Denmark, all of which can be punished with warnings, fines or jail time.

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Marijuana could soon be legalised in Copenhagen, after the city voted overwhelmingly in favour of a scheme that would see the drug sold through a network of state-run shops and cafes.

The scheme, if approved by the Danish parliament at the start of next year, could make the city the first to fully legalise, rather than simply tolerate, marijuana consumption.

The drug is already sold openly on the streets of Christiania, a self-proclaimed 'free town' in the city centre, despite the closure of the neighbourhood's Amsterdam-style coffee shops in 2004.

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Private Initiative Challenges Government Ban on Injection Rooms

Two out-of-service ambulances have been put back into service as mobile injection rooms for drug addicts.

The vehicles, which were donated by the privately owned emergency service company Falck, will be used to transport a team of volunteer doctors and nurses and a stock of clean needles in the Vesterbro district.

The mobile injection room service had its first shift on Monday and is planned to be on the road twice a week. During the first three hours of operation, seven drug addicts made use of the mobile facility.

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Sclerosis Patients to Get Legal Access to Drug Containing Cannabis Extract

The minister for internal affairs and health, Bertel Haarder, has ordered a law change that will legalise the prescription and sale of a prescription drug with marijuana as its active ingredient.

The law change will allow doctors to prescribe the drug Sativex, which has the same chemical compounds found in marijuana, to patients with multiple sclerosis, reports Berlingske newspaper.

"I understand from the Danish Medicines Agency that Sativex can help patients with multiple sclerosis, who have not responded to other sclerosis drugs. So, we're not going to let stiff bureaucratic rules stand in the way of those patients getting a treatment that can help them," Haarder said.

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Problem Of Ineffective Treatment Programmes Solved By Moving Counseling Into Schools

Cannabis abusers are finding it increasingly difficult to get help, say addiction specialists throughout the country. However, a successful pilot project has shown significant results by moving treatment programmes into the schools.

The pilot project involved 18 cannabis smokers at four vocational schools in Copenhagen, 15 of which used the drug several times a day.

Today the project is completed and only one of the students still smokes several times a day. Eight have dropped it completely, while the rest are down to a low or moderate consumption.

"Cannabis is the biggest abuse problem among young Danes and a major cause of the high drop-out-rates at the country's youth education programmes," Unna Madsen of the City Council's addiction centre, U-turn, told Politiken newspaper.

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After years of controversy, Denmark opened its first clinic on Monday to distribute free heroin under medical supervision to people who are heavily addicted to the drug.

The Scandinavian country joins Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany to allow prescriptions for medicinal heroin.

The clinic is set to serve only 120 of some 300 hard-core heroin addicts -- or only about one per cent of all drug addicts in the country.

Only addicts who have been referred from a methadone centre for treatment and who voluntarily request to enter the clinic will be permitted to participate.

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Decriminalisation of cannabis has moved from public to political debate following the release of a city committee report

A new Social Affairs Committee report on cannabis has recommended that the City Council seriously consider decriminalisation of the substance's as being a means to curbing gang violence.

The Social Liberals, Red-Green Alliance and Socialist People's Party (SF) at City Hall have all backed the legal sale of cannabis in small quantities for personal use for some time. And in February, the committee was given the green light to review the matter when the council's largest party, the Social Democrats, gave their support to looking into the issue. Over the past few years the government has made a point of cracking down hard on the city's cannabis dealing, sending waves of police and armoured vehicles into the city's self-proclaimed autonomous area of Christiania, where much of the trade is based.

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There is something different in the air at Christiania these days the usual spicy aroma of marijuana smoke now occasionally mixes with the smell of tear gas and burning tires. That's because, more than three decades after Europe's oldest and largest commune was established as an antidote to "selfish society," Danish authorities are moving to close it down. More than 90 people were arrested a few weeks ago after groups of youths fought running battles with police, throwing bottles and cobblestones and burning homemade barricades. The riot, a rare occurrence in this normally placid Scandinavian country, was prompted by police arriving to demolish a shelter deemed unsafe by the authorities.

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'70S UTOPIA SOON TO BE JUST ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL

I was strolling through the commotion of downtown Copenhagen, past chain restaurants dressed up to look old and under towering hotels that seem to be part of a different international chain each year. Then, as if from another age, a man pedaled his wife on a Christiania Bike -- two wheels pushing a big, utilitarian, rounded bucket. You'd call the couple "granola" in the United States -- they look as out of place here in Copenhagen as an Amish couple in Manhattan.

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The minister of health takes a tentative step towards allowing drug users to shoot up under the observation of health professionals

A long-standing battle between residents in the Vesterbro neighbourhood and the government over legal drug injection rooms may be drawing to a close. The minister of health, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, announced on Wednesday that he would push for a facility where some addicts could shoot up.

The injection room will provide a place for drug addicts to inject prescription drugs such as methadone while under the supervision of health professionals, who will also serve as counsellors.

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Christiania Is A Draw For Copenhagen's Fringe. But The Times, They Are A' Changin, And Rules Are Rules After All, It Seems

There is little heating in the sparsely furnished ex-barracks. The ashtrays need emptying, the tables need customers, and the walls need a fresh coat of paint, but 22-year-old Montreal-born Nicco doesn't seem to mind.

It's the end of a day's work at the Infocafe. The Canadian-Dane-Christianite is pouring leftover coffee down the sink. He has spent most of his adult life living and working in the Free State of Christiania.

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LONDON - A Danish study has found that almost half of all patients who are treated for cannabis-induced psychosis go on to develop some form of schizophrenia. Almost one-third go on to be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

The researchers, writing in the British Journal of Psychiatry, said in the study, those who used cannabis showed schizophrenic symptoms earlier than those who were not users.

The team from Aarhus University Hospital said there's been very little research carried out on people with schizophrenic symptoms who were known users of cannabis despite knowledge that cannabis has been linked to mental illness. This study is the first to show that temporary mental problems due to cannabis use are often followed by psychiatric illness.

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Denmark Out to Corral Commune

Copenhagen , Denmark -- Europe's longest-lasting experiment in self-governing anarchy may soon be no more.

The flag, red with yellow dots, still flies over the Free State of Christiania, and its marching band, the Women's Guard, totters along the unpaved streets: two steps forward, one step sideways.

But after 33 years as a hash smokers' sanctuary -- with its own radio station, newspaper, clinic, bakery, post office and open-air hashish market

this extended commune of nearly a thousand people, more commonly known as Christiania, finds the normally tolerant Danish government breathing down its neck.

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In a new survey of 15-24 year-old Europeans Denmark places top when it comes to being offered hash or having tried smoking hash.

Nearly half of the youngsters surveyed answered that it is easy to get hold of hash at their schools. Danes also take the lead in use of alcohol in the same age group among the 15 countries who participated in the survey.

'We have a youth culture in Denmark that goes into the city and drinks excessively, all the way from the 15-16-year-old age group - not quite the same as in other countries,' says Manager for the Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research in Aarhus, Mads Uffe Pedersen, who adds that Danish youngsters do not score as high on the scale when it comes to hard drugs.

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After a mass drug sweep of Christiania's famed Pusher Street, police expected a new illegal cannabis market would emerge

Four months after the police shutdown of Pusher Street, Christiania's main drag for drugs, Copenhagen Police say they're baffled that no new cannabis markets have popped up elsewhere in the city.

'We've been wondering for quite some time just what's going on in the drug scene. We've had various indications that the market had rebounded somehow, but we haven't been able to confirm anything geographically or in any specific milieu. There's no doubt that the Christiania cannabis market was so lucrative that some sort of replacement market was bound to show up sooner or later. Surprisingly, we haven't seen it yet, and it's a little hard to make out,' said Copenhagen Police deputy inspector Rene Hallin, vice chief of the narcotics division.

Vesterbro, Norrebro, Amager and Christianhavn Square have been tipped as areas with rising illegal cannabis sales, but internal surveillance of these neighbourhoods has revealed no significant increase in drug dealing since Pusher Street was razed.

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The Royal Danish Navy is preparing to launch a campaign aimed at halting the widely reported drinking and drug habits of seamen. The move comes after naval officers discovered a large amount of unnamed drugs on board a royal naval vessel, which was purportedly ready to be distributed amongst the ship's personnel. All ranks will in future be subject to random urine testing and strict limitations on alcohol consumption.

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