The shocking death of Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman from a suspected drugs overdose has highlighted a growing epidemic of heroin use across the US, officials have warned.

Uruguay’s Senate has approved the world’s first national marketplace for legal marijuana – an audacious and risky experiment that puts the government in charge of growing, selling and using a drug that is illegal almost everywhere else.

Sting has called for the legalisation of marijuana.

The Director of the US-based Drug Policy Alliance has said that Ireland needs to radically review the way it deals with the related problems of drugs and homelessness.