Global Ganja Report

Following a favorable court ruling earlier this year, cannabis advocates and growers are making a big push for a legal industry in South Africa. A first regional industry meeting was held Sept. 20 at Cato Ridge outside the port city of Durban, bringing together producers under the banner of the Cannabis Development Council of South Africa.

Brazil's ongoing favela wars have taken a dramatic turn for the bloody—prompting the government to send military troops into Rio de Janiero's notorious Rocinha. This is the most violent of the city's sprawling favelas—informal urban settlements virtually abandoned by the government for anything other than militarized anti-drug operations. The army on Sept. 22 deployed nearly 1,000 troops in Rocinha, responding to a request from the Rio state government, Defense Minister Raul Jungmann told local TV.

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts issued a unanimous ruling  Sept. 19, voiding court testimony based on "sobriety tests" carried out by police on motorists suspected of driving while high on pot. The Boston Globe reports that in limiting evidence from the familiar roadside tests used to snare drunk drivers—walking in a straight line, standing on one foot—the court found there is no scientific consensus those tests definitively prove someone is under the influence of cannabis.

Francisco Javier Ricaurte Gómez, one of the most powerful men in Colombia's justice system for the past 15 years, on Sept. 20 became the first former chief magistrate of the country's Supreme Court to go to prison. Bogotá daily El Tiempo reports that Ricuarte faces four charges related to the corruption scandal now unfolding in Colombia's highest judicial body. The Fiscalía, the country's top prosecutor, says he is one of the brains behind a ring that took in millions of pesos to pervert criminal cases.

A district court in Oslo on Sept. 18 sentenced Norway's former top police official for organized crime to 21 years in prison for conspiracy to smuggle hashish. Eirik Jensen was arrested in 2014 after being secretly filmed in a meeting with Gjermund Cappelen, said to be Norway's biggest hashish importer. The two men were tired together.

It has been a year and counting since Ohio passed its medical marijuana law in June 2016, and nobody has yet received any cannabis under the program. The logjam is due to the failure of the state to issue licenses to any cultivators, processors, dispensaries or testing labs.

Finally, the first sign of progress is seen as a local technical college has come forward to offer cannabis testing services.

Colombia's government—under pressure from Washington—is pushing ahead with plans to forcibly eradicate 50,000 hectares of coca leaf this year, despite mounting resistance from the peasant growers. In several incidents over the past weeks, forced eradication sparked violent confrontations between cocaleros and security forces. Even so-called "voluntary eradication" is now meeting with protest, as campesinos say their communities are being flooded with National Police troops, in violations of their pacts with the government.

Morocco has long been the world's leading cannabis producer, but the conservative monarchy has managed to keep any talk of legalization out of political discourse—until last year, when the country's biggest opposition party submitted a bill in parliament to at least allow cultivation for medicinal and industrial purposes. Now that effort has been dealt a setback, with the unexpected resignation of Ilyas El-Omari as head of the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM).