Global Ganja Report

Federal prosecutors pursuing drug charges against Montana medical marijuana operators want to keep jurors from hearing any evidence at trial about the state law approving such operations, or whether the defendants were complying with it. US Justice Department attorneys have made motions in at least two cases stemming from federal raids on dozens of medicinal cannabis operations this spring, asking judges to bar any testimony or evidence about medical marijuana.

The Oakland County Narcotics Enforcement Team raided sites Sept. 14 in Michigan's Commerce Township, where defense attorneys said 34 caregivers grew cannabis in 34 leased and locked units. No arrests were made in raids on properties associated with Absolute Herbal Remedies, but 500 plants and tens of thousands of dollars in growing equipment were seized.

More than 1,000 people carrying colorful home-made signs gathered on the steps of the Michigan capitol building in Lansing on Sept. 7 to protest a recent state Court of Appeals ruling that made commercial sales of medical marijuana illegal. "Marijuana smoke hung in the air most of the afternoon," one reporter wrote, while protesters chanted "Whose house? Our house! Show me what democracy is made of!" The protest—held on the first day the Michigan legislature returned for the fall session—was called by the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association to demand that lawmakers uphold the will of the voters in the Medical Marijuana Act, a ballot initiative passed overwhelmingly in 2008.

In an August 24 ruling (PDF), the Colombian Supreme Court rejected a 2009 constitutional amendment recriminalizing the possession of personal-use amounts of illegal drugs. Prior to that amendment, pushed vigorously by then-president Alvaro Uribe, the possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use had been legal under a 1994 Constitutional Court decision. Between the 1994 ruling the 2009 amendment, adults were allowed to legally possess up to 20 grams of marijuana, one gram of cocaine, and two grams of synthetic drugs. After Uribe's reform, people arrested with small amounts of illegal drugs faced prison sentences of 64 to 108 months.

The US Justice Department announced Aug. 30 that Kenneth Melson, acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), had been reassigned to another position in the department and that Dennis Burke, US attorney for Arizona, was resigning from his post. The department gave no reason for the changes, but they were clearly fallout from Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled ATF program that allowed some 2,000 weapons to go from the US to Mexico, where they were probably used in drug cartel violence.

Mexican marines shot and killed Gustavo Acosta Luján in the early morning of Sept. 1 in his home in Jardines de San Andrés, Apodaca municipality, in the northern state of Nuevo León. According to the Secretariat of the Navy, the marines, responding to an anonymous tip, were fired on from inside the house, and Gustavo Acosta, an "alleged criminal" with the alias "M-3," died in the operation. The marines said they found a 9 mm submachine gun, an AR-15 rifle and quantities of cocaine in the house. Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa has been using soldiers for police work in northern Mexico since militarizing the "war on drugs" shortly after he took office in December 2006.

Residents of Kington's poor district of Tivoli Gardens reacted with shock and disbelief to the news that extradited accused drug kingpin Christopher "Dudus" Coke arranged a plea bargain this week at Federal District Court in Manhattan. "I'm devastated," one anonymous member of the Coke clan told the Jamaica Gleaner. Scores were killed in days of street-fighting in the district last year as police and army troops were deployed to hunt down Coke for extradition to the US.

East Bay physician Dr. Frank Lucido, Mendocino activist Pebbles Trippet and attorney William Panzer have announced a new California initiative to legalize the state's biggest cash crop. The Repeal Cannabis Prohibition Act of 2012 would allow adults to legally possess up to three pounds and grow a ten-by-ten-foot garden, with the California Department of Public Health to oversee the commercial side. The text of the initiative has been submitted to the state Attorney General's office for review.