Global Ganja Report

A Polish opposition law-maker tried to smoke a joint in parliament Jan. 20 to kick off his legalization campaign—but outmaneuvered by the house speaker, he burned marijuana incense instead. Janusz Palikot, leader of the left-libertarian Palikot Party, announced in advance his plan to light up, giving speaker Ewa Kopac time to organize tighter security.  Wearing a cannabis leaf-shaped pin, Palikot instead lit up a stick of incense in front of a crowd of journalists. "We've burned marijuana," he said. "It's incense with a small legal amount of marijuana, which smells like marijuana, bought at a shop in Warsaw."

Kopacz reported Palikot's stunt to a prosecutor, who opened a probe to see whether he committed a criminal offense through an action to "promote or advertise" drugs.

In April, Polish lawmakers voted to soften their country's strict anti-drug laws by giving prosecutors the option not to charge those detained with small quantities of illegal substances. But Palikot, whose party brought in Poland's first trans-gender and openly gay MPs, is seeking full legalization of cannabis. (AFP, WSJ's Emerging Europe blog, Jan. 20)