Global Ganja Report

Saudi Arabia on May 17 beheaded a Pakistani man convicted of drug trafficking, bringing to 84 the number of executions in the kingdom so far this year. The pan-Arab news agency Al Bawaba  reports that the convict was beheaded in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, after being found guilty of attempting to traffic heroin into the kingdom in balloons he had swallowed. In 2014, Saudi Arabia carried out a total of 87 executions, so it is about to break last year's record not even halfway through 2015. Some of these have won much attention in the countries the convicts hailed from. On April 16, Saudi Arabia beheaded an Indonesian female domestic worker, just two days after executing another woman from the Southeast Asian country. In January, Saudi authorities publicly beheaded Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, a Muslim woman from Burma who was convicted of murder, in the holy city of Mecca. Footage of the execution showed Basim being dragged into a street and held down by four police officers as she repeatedly shouted, "I did not kill, I did not kill." Basim then screamed as a sword-wielding executioner struck her neck. Second and third blows completed the beheading and authorities quickly removed her body from the street.

Pakistan's Coast Guard on May 5 announced the seizure of more than three tons of hashish in a raid of an oil tanker bound for the Middle East, news agencies AFP and Reuters reported. The tanker was intercepted on a tip after it set sail from Pakistan's port of Karachi. Three crew members who hailed from the southwestern province of Baluchistan were arrested. Guardsmen used power-tools to pry open a secret chamber where the stash was hidden. Major Zafar Ahmed said the haul was the biggest ever scored in the history of the Coast Guard. He said the stash would have been worth some $50 million in the Middle Eastern countries where it was bound.

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos on May 9 called upon his National Drug Council to halt the spraying of glyphosate on suspected coca fields following its recent reclassification as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization. The decision to put an end to 20 years of the US-backed aerial spraying was applauded by leaders of the FARC guerillas. The spraying has long been opposed by the FARC as well as by Colombia's peasant communities. Santos' announcement came one week after government representatives and FARC leaders met in Havana for the 35th round of ongoing peace talks—this time to focus on justice and restitution for victims of Colombia's long civil war. (Colombia Reports, May 10; Prensa Latina, May 3)

Maya indigenous peasants in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas are marching cross-country to oppose violence by the local narco gangs and the corruption of local authorities that protect them. The "pilgrimage" left the rural town of  Simojovel some 15,000 strong at the end of March, and is now arriving at the state capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez, some 240 kilometers away through rugged country. The pilgrimage was organized by the Catholic pacifist group Pueblo Creyente (Faithful People) with the support of the local diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas in response to a wave of narco-violence  in Simojovel.  

Puerto Rico's Gov. Alejandro García Padilla on May 3 signed an executive order calling a halt to prosecutions for medical use of marijuana on the island territory. Effective immediately, the order authorizes the Commonwealth's Health Secretary Ana Rius to permit medical use of "some or all controlled substances or components of the cannabis plant." The decree also calls on Rius to produce a report within three month "detailing the efforts made in compliance with this order, and the results obtained and the work plan to follow." Cannabis will be subject to taxation under the new plan, which is seen by most media accounts (e.g. PanAm Post) as a strategy to address the Commonwealth's urgent fiscal crisis.

President Obama's nominee for attorney general, Loretta Lynch, was confirmed by the Senate after a long delay due to Capitol Hill party politicking on April 23. She becomes the first Black woman to head the US Justice Department, and she brings some credentials to the job that will hearten those concerned with social justice. As US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, she prosecuted the NYPD officers who sodomized Abner Louima in a New York police station bathroom with a broken broom handle in 1997. But at her confirmation hearing she appeared to tilt right, telling senators on Jan. 29: "[N]ot only do I not support the legalization of marijuana, it is not the position of the Department of Justice currently to support the legalization. Nor would it be the position should I become confirmed as attorney general." CelebStoner blog ominously notes that she has won support from such intolerant hardliners as New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who called her "a remarkable prosecutor with a clear sense of justice without fear or favor."

US Drug Enforcement Administration director Michele Leonhart is to step down next month, Attorney General Eric Holder announced April 21. Holder issued requisite praise of Leonhart, stating that she "led this distinguished agency with honor." But the circumstances of her departure are far from honorable. While Holder certainly wasn't so indiscrete as to mention it, Leonhart's resignation follows an internal Justice Department report last month finding that DEA agents attended parties with prostitutes paid for by local drug traffickers in Colombia. Media reports indicate that Leonhart, who has headed the DEA since 2007, has been under mounting pressure to resign since testifying to a congressional oversight committee about the scandal last week. (CBS, BBC News)

US District Judge Kimberly Mueller in Sacramento—who made history by granting the first extended hearings in federal court on the question of cannabis' continued listing under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act—on April 15 closed the hearings by ruling that the plant's Schedule I status is constitutional. "At some point in time," said Judge Mueller in issuing her decision in US v. Schweder et al, "a court may decide this status to be unconstitutional. But this is not the court and not the time." The Obama appointee decided to rule on the merits of the case, disregarding the insistence of federal prosecutors that she dismiss the motion for lack of standing by the defendants. For her standard of review, she applied the "rational basis test" to the defendants' challenge to cannabis' Schedule I status under the Equal Protection Clause. Under that standard, said Judge Mueller, "the statute passes muster. The questions raised by the defense are for Congress to resolve." Defendants say they will appeal to the Ninth Circuit. (The Leaf Online, Courthouse News Service, April 15)