Global Ganja Report

Hemp really did become a symbol of patriotism during the American Revolution, and was certainly grown by some of the Founders. But not all the stoner folklore checks out...

The VA only pledges not to cut off benefits to military veterans who use medical marijuana if they are enrolled in a state program. Those in states with no such programs remain the lurch. So vets are now speaking out in favor of pending state medical marijuana laws.

Military veterans continue to be denied much-needed treatment by the VA because of their cannabis use, even in states that have legalized. While there has been some progress on the question, vets are still being cut off—amid a combined national crisis of veteran suicides and opioid abuse.

The sex scandal investigation of Florida's far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz interlocks with a controversy concerning favoritism in handing out medical marijuana licenses in the Sunshine State. And one of the key beneficiaries appears to be Trulieve, now one of the leading cannabis companies in the United States. The origins of the firm go back to a nexus of prominent state Republicans, including names currently making stomach-churning national headlines.

Even as the edifice of cannabis prohibition crumbles state by state, the federal illegality of the plant and its psychoactive compound THC continues to drive a quest for loopholes in the relevant statutes.


The latest such legal artifice concerns Delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol — a less potent cannabinoid than the more common and notorious Delta-9 THC. Is there truth to the claim that hemp-derived Delta-8 THC was inadvertently legalized by the 2018 Farm Bill?

Can Rural America's Expropriated Use a New Crop to Forge a New Agrarianism?

Green Heffa Farms, in North Carolina’s Piedmont, has emerged as a national symbol of vision and success in America’s new hemp economy. As a producer of boutique full-spectrum hemp-flower products, it has won a cachet in the industry—which is augmented, at least in more enlightened sectors, by the fact that it is Black-owned, and has an overt political consciousness.

Green Heffa’s CEO is Clarenda Stanley—popularly known as Farmer Cee. She was featured in the April issue of Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine, and was last year the 2019 “Featured Farmer” for National Hemp History Week.

So-called "smokable hemp" is suddenly available in shops from coast to coast, legal under terms of last year's Farm Bill. But law enforcement is consternated, conservative politicians are apoplectic, and legislation is being prepared to ban the stuff at the state level. Is this permissible under federal law?

Over the past weeks, dozens of people across several states have experienced serious lung problems, even requiring hospitalization, apparently after using vape cartridges. It is unclear if cannabis products were at issue in all such cases, and authorities are still investigating. But the illicit market in unregulated knock-off dab carts may be to blame.