Global Ganja Report

The country's leading medical marijuana advocacy group, Americans for Safe Access (ASA), filed an appeal brief Jan. 26 in the DC Circuit to compel the federal government to reclassify cannabis for medical use. In July 2011, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) denied a petition filed in 2002 by the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC). The petition was denied only after the coalition sued the government for unreasonable delay. The ASA brief is an appeal of the rescheduling denial.

Jewish settlers from the Tapuch Junction area of the West Bank are suspected of purchasing hashish and cannabis from their Palestinian neighbors in the nearby village of Hawara. Israeli police investigating drug-smuggling across the "Green Line" that divides the West Bank from Israel detained several Palestinian youth at the village last week—and found that a confiscated client list included settlers from neighboring militant Jewish communities, including Yitzhar, Itamar and Har Bracha. Four Jewish clients were subsequently detained.

A Polish opposition law-maker tried to smoke a joint in parliament Jan. 20 to kick off his legalization campaign—but outmaneuvered by the house speaker, he burned marijuana incense instead. Janusz Palikot, leader of the left-libertarian Palikot Party, announced in advance his plan to light up, giving speaker Ewa Kopac time to organize tighter security.  Wearing a cannabis leaf-shaped pin, Palikot instead lit up a stick of incense in front of a crowd of journalists. "We've burned marijuana," he said. "It's incense with a small legal amount of marijuana, which smells like marijuana, bought at a shop in Warsaw."

The California Supreme Court issued an order Jan. 18 indicating its intent to review two controversial medical marijuana cases that have resulted in the suspension of several local dispensary ordinances across the state. As a result of the order, Pack v. City of Long Beach and City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patient's Health and Wellness Ctr., Inc. have both been vacated in anticipation of the high court's ruling. The Pack decision held that dispensary regulations may be preempted by federal law, and the Riverside decision held that localities could legally ban distribution altogether.

A five-county study assessing impacts on salmonids presented Jan. 10 in Eureka, CA, named unpermitted grading as a major impact—and cited the cannabis industry as a key culprit. Humboldt County's Supervisor Mark Lovelace said the effects of illegal grading connected to cannabis grows are as bad as the impacts seen during the worst years of the timber industry. "It's shocking," he said, referring to photos he'd viewed of grow-related grading. "It compares with the worst of the worst from some of the bad years of the timber industry."

Agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) worked with an informant and with Mexican enforcement agents in 2007 to launder millions of dollars for Mexico's Beltrán Leyva cartel, according to reports in the New York Times and the Mexican magazine emeequis. The information comes from the Mexican government's response to a US request for the extradition of Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, a Colombian trafficker arrested in Mexico in 2010.

On Jan. 11—at exactly 4:20 PM—three medical marijuana dispensaries in the city of San Diego were raided by the cross-jurisdictional Narcotic Task Force (NTF) of San Diego County. The locations attacked included California's Best Meds on University Ave., Golden West in North Park, and San Diego Organic Wellness Association in Pacific Beach. Armed with handguns, rifles, and battering rams, dozens of masked NTF officers rushed into the facilities, breaking down doors and windows, and forcing all patients inside to the floor.

A new survey by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) indicates that the value of opium in Afghanistan soared by 133% in 2011 over the previous year, netting farmers $1.4 billion. A blight last year wiped out much of the poppy yield, driving up prices. Yields have now returned to pre-blight levels—a 61% increase, from 3,600 tons in 2010 to 5,800 tons last year. But prices remain high, and UNODC says a simultaneous drop in the price of wheat contributed to the increase in poppy cultivation. Gross income from opium in 2011 was 11 times higher than that earned from wheat—the biggest difference in income since 2003. Afghanistan currently supplies an estimated 90% of the world's opium, with the largest areas of poppy cultivation in the country's restive south. (VOA, Jan. 13)