Global Ganja Report

Colombian guerilla leader Jorge Enrique Rodríguez Mendieta AKA "Ivan Vargas" was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a District Court in New York March 19 for conspiring to import cocaine into the US. Mendieta, who was extradited in 2007, pleaded guilty in December to the charges, admitting that he was commander of the FARC's 24th Front from 1998 to 2004.

Vivian Blake, a former top leader of Jamaica's "Shower Posse," which US prosecutors say was responsible for more than 1,400 drug-related killings within the United States in the 1980s, died March 20 in Kingston. Blake, 54, was rushed to an emergency room with breathing problems before he died. His daughter, Dominique Blake, said he had been suffering from kidney failure and diabetes.

Guatemalan police forces, together with army troops and DEA agents, destroyed 319 million opium plants and 250,000 cannabis plants, together valued at an estimated $780 million, in a four-day operation last month in Ixiguan and Tajumulco municipalities of San Marcos department, near the Mexican border. The National Civil Police said San Marcos is a "sanctuary" of opium cultivation. (EFE, Feb. 5)

Members of Parliament from the Liberal, New Democratic, and Conservative Parties of Canada presented petitions March 15 to Ottawa's House of Commons with over 12,000 signatures asking the Minister of Justice to stop the extradition of activist Marc Emery.

For the third time in ten years, New York City has agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle a lawsuit over illegal strip searches of thousands of nonviolent prisoners. The settlement, announced March 22, provides $33 million to the roughly 100,000 people who were strip-searched after being charged with misdemeanors and taken to Rikers Island and other city jails.

Two Los Angeles police officers spoke out March 17 against a medical cannabis law for Hawaii in testimony before a Hawaii Medical Marijuana Summit held in Wailuku, Maui. "It's so bad in LA," said Sgt. Eric Bixler of the LAPD Narcotics Division. He said law enforcement officials there deal daily with what he called the effects of California's Proposition 215, including people driving while smoking, and teens buying cannabis at medicinal dispensaries to resell on the street.

Trevor Douglas, 25, of Avon, Colo., was convicted of cannabis possession March 9, despite his claims that the plant is a crucial part of his spiritual practice and deserves First Amendment protection. Douglas told the court he uses cannabis as a religious sacrament, similar to the use of bread and wine in Catholic Holy Communion.

Alaska State Troopers are investigating a 15-plant cannabis grow discovered off Tower Circle in Seward on March 20. The local Peninsula Clarion reports March 25 that no one has been charged in the grow operation. "If you think something is connected and put the information out there that we're looking, the other people may go underground," state police spokesperson Peters said. "They could burn the evidence." Troopers apparently discovered the Tower Circle grow by following their noses. "Due to aromatic nature of the marijuana, a trooper was able to smell it during one of the contacts with the residence, and they went back later to verify," Peters said.