Global Ganja Report

Attorney General Jeff Sessions signed an order July 19 reversing limits on the federal civil asset forfeiture instated by the Obama administration in 2015. The widely criticized civil forfeiture program allows law enforcement to seize cash and property from citizens who have not been charged with any crime. But under the Obama-era change, the feds respected the right of states to rein in the practice. With Sessions' change, that is now undone.

The horrific case of 43 college students from the Mexican village of Ayotzinapa who disappeared in September 2014—and were allegedly murdered by a local narco-gang—made deeply embarrassing international headlines again this week. The New York Times reports July 10 that sophisticated spyware supplied to Mexico officially to track narco-traffickers and terrorists was instead used against human rights investigators looking into the Ayotzinapa case.

If Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto hoped to present an image of stability to US Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly when he flew in on July 5, it proved to be pretty bad timing. On Kelly's second day, he toured southern Guerrero state to witness opium eradication operations there. Late that very night, a riot broke out at the prison in the state's biggest city, violence-torn Acapulco. The explosion of violence at Las Cruces CERESO (Social Readaption Center) ended with at least 28 inmates dead—many of them mutilated and several beheaded.

Authorities in South Korea have long boasted that the country is "drug free," but that fiction is getting harder to maintain. Korea JoongAang Daily on July 6 reports that the amount of drugs seized by customs agents in the Republic of Korea jumped significantly in the first half of this year. The Customs Service said it seized 27.5 kilograms (60.6 pounds) of drugs worth 41.3 billion won ($35.9 million) in the first six months of 2017.

An armed clash in the early hours of July 5 in a mountain village in Mexico's border state of Chihuahua left at least 25 dead—the latest indication that narco-gangs are stronger than the government across much of the country's drug-producing sierras.

Cuba is opening up its economy to private busineses and foreign investors, hoping for an end to the US embargo, and attracting record numbers of internaitonal tourists. But the new open atmosphere is definitely not extending to cannabis. In announcing a big increase in interceptions of illegal drugs this year, the nation's drug czar just took an open swipe at other Latin American countries that are embracing legalization, decriminalization or medical marijuana.

Three of the Balkan states to emerge from the ashes of Yugoslavia a generation ago are now among the first countries in the ex-communist world to move toward embrace of medical marijuana.

The First Argentine Congress on Cannabis and Health was held last week at the National University of La Plata (UNLP), bringing together academics, activists, cultivators and patients from across the Southern Cone country. The focus was on expanding the extremely limited medical marijuana law passed in Argentina earlier this year. At the opening ceremony, held in an auditorium within La Plata's provinicial legislature building, UNLP president Raúl Perdomo pledged to "work to make the regulations for the recently approved law include the national universities in cultivation and research."