Global Ganja Report

Tim Padgett of Time magazine's Global Spin blog queried Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske about comments made by Mexican President Felipe Calderón in his speech following the recent Monterrey casino massacre, in which he said the US was complicit for its "insatiable" demand for drugs and should consider "market alternatives" to failed anti-drug policies. Was this a coded reference to legalization, and would this put pressure on the White House to consider the idea? Kerlikowske responded:

An Aug. 31 report on PBS NewsHour provides mixed indications on recent hype about the supposed presence of Mexican drug cartels in the cannabis trade of Northern California's Emerald Triangle—which has now been officially designated a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area by the federal government. In the Mendocino National Forest, which has seen unprecedented raids this year, 10 Mexican nationals are among the approximately 100 arrested. Last year, Mendocino County saw a record-breaking number of armed confrontations during marijuana raids—"many with Mexican nationals with suspected links to drug gangs across the border." Two Mexican nationals were killed in last year's raids—one, named Mariano Fernández, reportedly after he aimed an "AK-47-type rifle" at a police SWAT team.

The oddly named mapping website FloatingSheep.com has produced a map showing the differences in the retail price of cannabis in the United States, coast to coast. The map—apparently featured in the September issue of Wired magazine under the cheeky title "Infoporn: O Say, Can You THC?"—is based on information gleaned from consumer reports on the Price of Weed website.

The New York Times on July 27 ran an editorial urging New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo to follow the lead of New Jersey's Gov. Chris Christie and allow the seriously ill to self-medicate with cannabis. The editorial, dubbed "Sensible and Humane," is a good sign of more tolerant and enlightened attitudes reaching the mainstream—even on the traditionally more staid East Coast. The editorial reads:

Writing on his Celebstoner blog, Steve Bloom recalls that while campaigning for the Senate in 2004, President Barack Obama said, "We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws." But on July 22, at a town hall meeting at the Univeristy of Maryland, he stated,: "Am I willing to pursue a decriminalization strategy as an approach? No."  Instead, he offered predictable rhetoric about treatment and prevention:

We have noted before that the cannabis industry has a huge carbon footprint—something of a dirty little secret for the legalization movement. David Downs in the July 13 issue of East Bay Express has a fascinating cover-story, "How Green Is Your Pot?" Traveling to backwoods Humboldt County, Downs finds: "A new collective is trying to sell sustainable, organically grown marijuana, but patients are hooked on indoor weed that wastes energy and pollutes the planet."

South African anthropologist Francis Thackeray has asked permission to open the graves of William Shakespeare and his family to determine what killed the Bard—and whether his immortal works may have been composed under the influence of cannabis. While Shakespeare's bones could reveal clues about his health and death, the question of his cannabis use depends on the presence of hair, fingernails or toenails in the grave.

Jim Squatter was already a longtime veteran of the squatting, anti-nuclear and anarchist movements before a devastating accident turned him into a medical marijuana user—and a fighter for the right to medicinal cannabis.