Global Ganja Report

Members of the group Legaliza Perú held a sit-in at the doors of Lima's conservative daily newspaper El Comercio on May 16 to protest an opinion piece by columnist Martha Meier that ran a week earlier, with the sneering title of "Y ahora... el lobby de los pastrulos," or "And now... the pastrulo lobby." Pastrulo is Peruvian slang for someone who smokes cocaine paste—yet Meier was reacting to the successful cannabis legalization march that was held in Peru's capital on May 3! So this is sort of like calling cannabis smokers "crack-heads." The article was full of the usual distortions about how cannabis is "very addictive" and "affects mental health" (recycled from the world media's scare machine, and duly accepted unquestioningly). Legaliza Perú's press release charged that the article was "inexact and prejudicial," which is being very polite.

The May 3 Global Marijuana March affair—known locally as the Manifestación Mundial de la Marihuana, or MMM—brought out several hundred to Lima's downtown Plaza Francia. It has been growing every year since it was launched in 2010, and Peru's prohibitionist establishment indeed has reason to be worried. (La Mula, May 16; La Mula, May 4)

Cross-post to High Times

Graphic:  US State Department

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