Global Ganja Report

Dr. Ronni Gamzi, director-general of the Israeli Health Ministry, announced last week that the ministry will establish a unit to produce and oversee the supply of medicinal cannabis. The unit will begin operating in January 2012, to meet an anticipated exploding demand without resorting to imports.

The New York Times on July 27 ran an editorial urging New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo to follow the lead of New Jersey's Gov. Chris Christie and allow the seriously ill to self-medicate with cannabis. The editorial, dubbed "Sensible and Humane," is a good sign of more tolerant and enlightened attitudes reaching the mainstream—even on the traditionally more staid East Coast. The editorial reads:

On July 25, following extensive testimony from medical cannabis advocates, the San Diego City Council voted to repeal an ordinance passed in April that would have restricted dispensaries to a few remote industrial areas of the city. Only a couple of collectives would have been allowed to open after they came into compliance with one of the most strict ordinances in the state of California. The City Council must now consider the recommendations of its own Medical Marijuana Task Force, which came up with a less restrictive set of rules—although still keeping dispensaries 1,000 feet away from schools, playgrounds, libraries, childcare facilities.

The Oakland City Council on July 26 passed an ordinance that will double the number of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city, to eight from the current four—the Oakland Patient Center, the Purple Heart Patient Center, Coffeeshop Blue Sky, and the Harborside Health Center. The new ordinance was passed with an amendment that provides the city with access to all the dispensaries' financial information. And accompanying legislation imposes a $5,000 application fee and a $60,000 annual regulatory fee on each dispensary. The Council put off discussion of amending the city's cultivation ordinance, which would regulate large-scale cannabis farms, until the Public Safety Committee reconvenes in the fall. (Office of the City Clerk, City of Oakland, July 26; San Francisco Chronicle's Oakland Blog, July 13)

Speaking before a conference of campesina women in Cochabamba July 25, Bolivia's President Evo Morales said he fears a US plot to frame him for drug offense: "Do you know what? I think they have to be preparing something. So much that I'm afraid to go with our airplane to the United States. Surely when we arrive, they can plant something and detain the presidential plane."

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) passed a resolution July 26 calling for an end to the “War on Drugs” during the venerable civil rights organization's 102th annual convention in Los Angeles. "Today the NAACP has taken a major step towards equity, justice and effective law enforcement," said NAACP president Benjamin Jealous. "These flawed drug policies that have been mostly enforced in African American communities must be stopped and replaced with evidenced-based practices that address the root causes of drug use and abuse in America."

A massive, six-county cannabis eradication operation targeting Northern California's Mendocino National Forest is currently underway, with a multi-agency task force of hundreds of state, federal and county officers claiming seizures of some 292,000 plants and 77 arrests. "At this point, the operation is going as planned. We're making very good progress," said Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman. Raids are taking place simultaneously in Mendocino, Lake, Colusa, Glenn, Tehama, and Trinity counties, which all contain portions of the Mendocino National Forest.

Writing on his Celebstoner blog, Steve Bloom recalls that while campaigning for the Senate in 2004, President Barack Obama said, "We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws." But on July 22, at a town hall meeting at the Univeristy of Maryland, he stated,: "Am I willing to pursue a decriminalization strategy as an approach? No."  Instead, he offered predictable rhetoric about treatment and prevention: