Global Ganja Report

Peter Gorman, the acclaimed journalist, naturalist and adventurer who aggressively covered cannabis and the drug war beat for over 30 years, died at his home in Texas on April 24 at the age of 71. He had just returned from a long-planned river journey into a remote area of the Peruvian Amazon that he had first visited in 1984, and where he first encountered the psychoactive shamanic substances that would define much of his life's work.

A ground-breaking British Columbia dispensary that has been operating for 20 years won a request for an "exemption" from the licensing requirements of Canada's Cannabis Act by vote of the Victoria city council. This municipal action is a challenge to the national crackdown on Canda's "gray-market" dispensaries.

Cannabis may be legal in California, but illicit cultivation persists—especially in the National Forests, where it often takes a grave ecological toll. The CROP Project—for Cannabis Removal On Public Lands—is now bringing together environmentalists, law enforcement and the legal cannabis industry for a coordinated approach to the problem.

Having cannabis removed from the federal list of controlled substances has long been the holy grail of legalization advocates. Several bills have now been introduced on Capitol Hill to do exactly that. Do any stand a chance of becoming law in the current polarized climate?

A couple in rural Alabama lost everything—home, belongings, business—after $50 worth of cannabis and a single legal pharmaceutical pill were found in a drug taskforce raid. The case raises questions about asset forfeiture laws, and their invitation to abuse by overzealous cops. 

The doctrine of nullification has a long and harshly contested legacy in the history of the United States—it has been invoked in defense of both just causes and frankly evil ones. But some argue that it is time to revisit the idea—to put an end to federal cannabis prohibition.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions signed an order July 19 reversing limits on the federal civil asset forfeiture program that were instated under 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.

An investigation by the US Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration, launched under pressure of litigation brought by the libertarian-leaning Institute for Justice, maddeningly finds that the Internal Revenue Service has been using asset forfeiture to confiscate millions of dollars from businesses that committed no crimes. The libertarian-oriented website Reason breaks it down in detail, stating that "between 2012 and 2014, IRS investigators seized hundreds of bank accounts from business owners based on nothing but a suspicious pattern of deposits. In more than 90 percent of those cases, the money was completely legal."