Global Ganja Report

Ann Arbor's Hash Bash marked its 46th annual celebration of cannabis culture, with public smoking, no arrests—and an activist call to arms to get a legalization measure passed in Michigan this November.

The Hash Bash was a landmark counterculture event when it was launched on the University of Michigan's Diag on April 1, 1972. This year, organizers were openly hoping it would be the last one before cannabis is legalized in the Wolverine State—and urging a push to make it so.

Authorities' denial of a permit to the longtime organizers of Denver's annual 420 rally has prompted a change of leadership and tone. Now, the new leaders that got the permit are saying it will no longer be called a "rally," and are downplaying its usual activist spirit. Have oppositional politics outlived their place in the age of legalization?

A medical marijuana initiative has won enough signatures to make the November ballot in Utah. But the state's medical association has launched its own campaign to oppose it—and is challenging the validity of the petition drive. With the governor also opposed, the initiative will face a tough fight.

District of Columbia activists actually passed out joints to city lawmakers in their effort to press them on a law to permit cannabis sales in the nation's capital. They've also tried to win this through ballot initiative, building on 2014's Initiative 71 that legalized possession of herb in DC. But councilmembers say their hands are tied by a Congressional stricture on any further lifting of the legal pressure on cannabis.

After Jeff Sessions issued a memo urging prosecutors to seek the death penalty for those "dealing in extremely large quantities of drugs," even mainstream media outlets began raising the alarm that this could actually be used against large-scale legal cannabis cultivators in places like California. Is this threat is at all realistic?

A British Columbia firm which is one of Canada's leading licensed producers of medical marijuana has entered a partnership with the national subsidiary of Sandoz, a global leader in the pharmaceutical industry. The deal is being hailed as a milestone that signals the arrival of cannabis in the corporate economy.

Several bills now pending before the Colorado state house will further shape what the legal cannabis economy will look like in the Centennial State—for better or for worse. While some of these measures would mean a freer atmosphere both for "recreational" and medicinal users, others may portend greater big-money control of the fast-growing industry.

Amid legal challenges and disputes over zoning in Detroit, Michigan's long-awaited regulatory regime for cannabis dispensaries continues to face obstacles to implementation. This has left hundreds of dispensaries operating in a "gray market"—tolerated by the authorities on an unofficial basis while the mess is being worked out. But now state authorities have started to order these outlets closed—potentially leaving thousands of registered users without access to their medicine.