Global Ganja Report

Roger Christie, founder of the Hawaii Cannabis Ministry, was denied bail July 16 by US District Judge Alan Kay in Honolulu. Kay noted  allegations that Christie, 61, continued operating what prosecutors are calling his marijuana distribution ring from jail.

The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Michigan, in partnership with the law firm of Daniel W. Grow, PLLC, has filed a lawsuit  against Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and the manager of its Battle Creek store for wrongfully firing an employee for using medicinal marijuana in accordance with state law to treat the painful symptoms of an inoperable brain tumor and cancer.

For 25 years, journalist Peter Gorman has been traveling to Peru and experimenting with the jungle hallucinogen ayahuasca, a mind-bending brew prepared from vines, bark and leaves. Gorman picked the Peruvian side of the Amazon, the city of Iquitos, as the base for his studies that he writes about in Ayahuasca in My Blood.

Costa Rica has granted the US military a six-month window to bring 7,000 Marines, five planes and 46 warships into its territory to help intercept north-bound narcotics. The permission, granted by a 31-8 vote of the Legislative Assembly on July 2, allows the US to use the country's territory through Dec. 31.

A multi-agency federal task force on July 7 descended on the property of Joy Greenfield of Covelo, the first Mendocino County patient to pay the $1,050 application fee under the county medical marijuana ordinance, which allows collectives to grow up to 99 plants provided they comply with regulations. Greenfield had applied in the name of her collective, Light The Way, which opened in San Diego earlier this year.

A proposed ordinance going before Oakland City Council’s Public Safety Committee next week aims to curtail indoor cannabis growers in the city by regularizing major producers for the medical market. Councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan and Larry Reid propose permitting four large, industrial-scale cultivators, who would then supply Oakland’s six dispensaries (the ordinance would add two dispensaries to the currently permitted four) with the 6,000 pounds of cannabis the dispensaries sell a year.

Viktor Ivanov, head of Russia's Federal Drug Control Service, speaking before the State Duma June 30, said Moscow should re-criminalize drug use, confiscate land used for cannabis cultivation, and close the Central Asian border in order to combat trafficking.

California attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown has come out strongly against Proposition 19, the voter initiative that would effectively legalize in the state if passed this November. Speaking before the California District Attorneys Association Conference in Monterey, Brown said legalizing would open the flood gates for the ruthless and deadly Mexican drug cartels: "Every year we get more and more marijuana and every year we find more guys with AK-47's coming out of Mexico going into forests and growing more and more dangerous and losing control." (KSBW, June 29)