Global Ganja Report

Just little over a week before legalization took effect in California on Jan. 1, state police stopped a truck hauling 1,875 pounds of cannabis in Mendocino County, seizing the goods and slapping the two occupants with misdemeanor possession charges. This despite the fact that they were hauling for their employer, Ukiah-based Old Kai Logistics, and had paperwork showing the firm is licensed by county authorities. It remains to be seen if prosecutors will pursue the case in light of legalization, and the affair has enflamed suspicions between growers and authorities at a critical moment.

A new study by the Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College London has reached astonishing findings about the therapeutic potentialities of psilocybin, the psychoactive chemical in magic mushrooms. A first report from the group's study, released in October, indicated that psilocybin can "reset" the brains of depressed patients. A second report, just published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, indicates that the psychedelic agent may even affect political views.

Longtime California cannabis crusader Dennis Peron, who probably did more than any other one human being to bring about legalization of medical marijuana, died Jan. 27 at a San Francisco veteran's hospital, following a battle with lung cancer. He was 72. Peron was the prime mover behind San Francisco's Proposition P, the 1991 voter initiative that made the city the first government entity in the US to officially embrace medical marijuana, deprioritizing police enforcement for medicinal users.

Colombia, long notorious as a violence-torn drug war dystopia, is now set to become a global leader in legal production of cannabis for the medical market. Vancouver-based International Cannabis Corp, also known as ICC Labs, is the latest foreign company to win a production license in the South American country. ICC Labs says it intends to cultivate "non-psychoactive" cannabis plants containing the cannabinoid CBD to produce various medicinal products for domestic and international distribution.

On the heels of December's British Columbia high court decision striking down mandatory minimum prison terms for cannabis defendants as "cruel and unusual punishment" in contravention of Canada's constitution, the provincial court system has now just applied similar principles to use of solitary confinement.

So California's rebel rednecks think they're taking Humboldt County with them when they leave the state, it appears. The latest split-the-state initiative was unveiled at a Sacramento press conference Jan. 16, covered by USA Today. "The current state of California has become governed by a tyranny," the group declared. Their proposed solution is to form the state of "New California," taking most of the rural counties with them, and leaving behind the heavily urbanized coast.

Some rare good news is reported from Iran, where a reform of the country's drug laws may save the lives of thousands now on death row. Some 5,000 people are currently awaiting execution for drug offenses in the Islamic Republic, and all of them could now have their sentences reviewed, according to the New York Times.

A welcome blow is reported against the deeply ingrained stigma that attaches even to users of basically harmless drugs like cannabis that happen to be illegal. The Global Commission on Drug Policy—a body with dissident views but made up of prestigious elder statesmen and world leaders, so it can't be readily ignored—has just issued a statement calling on policymakers and the media to avoid using terms such as "drug user," "addict" and "junkie." The report includes a checklist of what terms should be eschewed or embraced to avoid language portraying people who use drugs as "physically inferior or morally flawed."