Global Ganja Report

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)

Colorado US Attorney John Walsh on Jan. 12 issued an ultimatum in letters to 23 dispensaries and landlords he claimed are in violation of federal and state law. The dispensaries, which he said are located within 1,000 feet of schools, were given 45 days to cease operations or face civil and criminal penalties. "When the voters of Colorado passed the limited medical marijuana amendment in 2000, they could not have anticipated that their vote would be used to justify large marijuana stores located within blocks of our schools," Walsh said in a statement announcing the letters. 

Officials in Mendocino County revealed Jan. 11 that the US Attorney's Office in San Francisco had threatened to sue the county over its medical marijuana cultivation permit program, prompting its suspension. The warning was delivered at a Jan. 3 meeting between County Counsel Jeanine Nadel and representatives of the US Attorney's Office, Nadel said. County supervisors are scheduled to review the permit ordinance on Jan. 24. The program was also suspended pending the outcome of a Southern California court case that tests the legitimacy of issuing permits for cannabis-related endeavors—the reason given by officials at the time of the suspension on Jan 9.

Ricardo Soberón, the anti-drug chief who last year briefly suspended coca eradication in Peru, resigned under pressure from the administration of President Ollanta Humala Jan. 10. The Council of Ministers (cabinet) appointed Carmen Masías Claux, a psychologist who is an advocate of eradication, to replace Soberón as head of the National Commission for Development and Life without Drugs (DEVIDA). The Council of Ministers is now led by the man who was interior minister at the time of Soberón's suspension of the program, Oscar Valdes—who publicly disagreed with the suspension, and ordered the program's resumption within a week.