Global Ganja Report

Some of her fans fondly recall that Gilligan's Island co-star Dawn Wells, who played innocent Mary Ann and passed away on Dec. 30 in Los Angeles, had been arrested for cannabis possession in 2007. Police in Idaho, where she then lived, stopped her car for swerving on the night of Wells' 69th birthday, Oct. 18, and said they detected the smell of marijuana. Four partially smoked joints were found in the car.

A group of more than 350 citizens filed suit against the Electoral Commission in the High Court of New Zealand on Dec. 6, seeking to have the "No" results of the country’s recent cannabis legalization referendum dismissed.

At the annual Vienna meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the governing body of the UN Office on Drugs & Crime (UNODC) voted Dec. 2 to strike cannabis from Schedule IV of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the global treaty regulating drug control policy.

The year 2020's record-breaking wildfires in California and other Western states have compounded the grim impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic—and have similarly been politicized. Thus far, the blow they have dealt to the burgeoning cannabis industry has been well weathered. But this will clearly pose a growing challenge in the years to come—as those parts of the country where legal cannabis cultivation is most advanced are also the most vulnerable to this devastating sign of ecological disequilibrium.

A new day has dawned for medical marijuana patients in Argentina, who have finally won the right to home cultivation, three and a half years after medicinal use of cannabis derivatives was officially legalized in the South American country.

President Alberto Fernández on Nov. 12 signed a decree that had been issued by the Health Ministry earlier this year, stating: "It is imperative to create a regulatory framework that allows timely, inclusive and secure access for those who require to use cannabis as a therapeutic tool."

The tradition of cannabis cultivation, hashish production and sacramental use goes back millennia in Nepal, and the country was among the last to sign up to the global prohibition regime. Now, a legalization effort is underway in parliament—even as eradication operations continue.

Voters in Montana passed a ballot measure mandating legalization of adult-use cannabis. But there was a pre-emptive attempt in the state legislature to repeal it before it even passed. Montana's road to legalization has been a long and twisted one, and there may be further political fights ahead. 

The original peoples of what is now the United States were left in legal limbo in the wake of the 2018 Farm Bill, which made hemp cultivation again lawful. Federally recognized Native American tribes could not cultivate under state regulation, because the states have limited jurisdiction on their reservations. But the US Agriculture Department dragged its heels in issuing federal regs that could apply on these lands. Caught between two sovereigns, many farmers in Indian country are asserting their right to cultivate hemp under the un-extinguished sovereignty of their own Native nations.