Global Ganja Report

Late on the night of Dec. 13, the Long Beach City Council deadlocked on a motion to ban medical marijuana collectives in the city—a measure backed by both the city attorney and police department. The vote—split 4-to-4—was quickly followed by a second vote to delay another such vote until January. The vote followed some three hours of public comments—from medical marijuana patients and activists, lawyers and lobbyists, to local business owners and residents who claimed dispensaries were selling pot to "kids on bikes." One of the patients who spoke, Mark Lee—who has no legs and is wheelchair bound—urged the council not to ban the dispensaries because it would force him to obtain his medicine on the street.

On Dec. 12, "narco-banners" (narcomantas) with a four-paragraph communiqué were hung from pedestrian overpasses at 10 different spots around the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, signed with the name of Miguel Angel Treviño AKA "Z-40"—a fugitive leader of Los Zetas. Not hand-scrawled like most narcomantas, but professionally printed, the messages' first paragraph declared: "We do not govern this country, nor do we have a regime; we are not terrorists or guerrillas. We concentrate on our work and the last thing we want is to have problems with any government, neither Mexico nor much less with the US." The message went on to distance both Treviño and the Zetas from the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US, as well as an August attack in a Monterrey casino that killed more than 50.

Police in Amsterdam are complaining about new rules barring them from smoking cannabis while off duty. Officers in the Dutch capital, famous for its tolerant drug policy, have been told they must set the public "a good moral example." The ban, due to take effect on Jan. 1, will make the force the first in the Netherlands to bar officers from indulging while not at work.

A petition online at Roots Action unites the demands of the Occupy Wall Street movement with those of the medical marijuana movement. We are glad that some people are getting the big picture!

Arrests for low-level pot possession dropped in the weeks after New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly warned officers not to make arrests for small quantities found in pockets or bags, according to new data released Dec. 7. Kelly issued the internal order Sept. 19 after claims from civil rights groups that officers were wrongly arresting people in a state where personal possession is punishable with a fine. There are more arrests on cannabis charges—about 50,000 a year—than any other crime in New York City. Pot cases account for about one of every seven that turn up in criminal courts.

The Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Fairfax—California's oldest cannabis dispensary—is preparing to close its doors  following a Dec. 2 ruling by Marin County Superior Court Judge Roy Chernus, who refused to stop the club's pending eviction. Chernus found that the dispensary's lease requires compliance with federal law, which forbids selling cannabis. MAMM founder Lynnette Shaw told Global Ganja Report by e-mail Dec. 5: "We are moving ourselves shortly to an unspecified location for storage. Maybe even today. Sigh..."

Copenhagen's city council voted on Nov. 17 to empower its social affairs committee to draw up a detailed plan to legalize cannabis. If the plan is approved by Denmark's new left-of-center parliament next year, the city could become the first to legalize the herb—rather than simply tolerate it, as police do in the Netherlands. Under the concept, approved by a vote of 39-9, the city would grant licenses to individual growers, and city-owned shops would then sell their crop to the public.

A little-known office of the US Defense Department is now taking bids from private security firms on a $3 billion contract for US-funded anti-narcotics operations in Mexico, Colombia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries. According to a report in Wired News, the Pentagon's Counter Narco-Terrorism Program Office (CNTPO) announced a "mega-contract" on Nov. 9 for as much as $950 million for "operations, logistics and minor construction," up to $975 million for training foreign forces, $875 million for "Information" tasks, and $240 million for "program and program support." The cash will start flowing next August, and the contractors may be able to extend the jobs for three more years.