Global Ganja Report

There has been a flurry of vague but lurid reportage about a supposedly addicting and debilitating pseudo-cannabis that is going around in Sierra Leone and other West African countries. This may be akin to products such as K2 and Spice, widely marketed in the US and Europe—but if reports are to be believed, it is far more dangerous.

The National Football League has awarded a $1 million research grant to study the impacts of cannabinoids on pain management and neuroprotection in football players. The move represents a breakthrough given the NFL's longstanding zero-tolerance stance on cannabis use.

With political and legal space opening for cannabis in state after state, a backlash is manifesting in the idea of caps on the potency—whether of bud, extracts or edibles. Voices from the industry and activist community see this as a throwback to the days of Reefer Madness.

Native American nations in New York state are eyeing the legal cannabis business, with some reservations already operating dispensaries. With state authorities yet to issue licensing regulations, the Shinnecock and Iroquois nations are asserting their rights under principles of indigenous sovereignty.

New York’s new mayor has inherited a real human rights crisis at Rikers Island, the city’s principal jail, with desperate inmates launching hunger strikes in protest of oppressive and dangerous conditions. Promises by the previous administration to close the facility saw insufficient action, “decarceration” advocates charge. But with the new admin, the situation may be going from bad to worse.

There is jubilation among cannabis advocates in Thailand after authorities announced a change to the narcotics code allowing personal cultivation—a breakthrough for the Asian continent. But does the reform really presage full legalization?

An official study in New York reveals numerous false positives in drug tests carried out by the state prison system, with hundreds of inmates punished (sometimes quite harshly) for imbibing that did not actually take place —including for cannabinoids. 

Voters in Montana approved a cannabis legalization initiative in 2020, which included language explicitly calling for expungement of past convictions. But the process has been meeting with some resistance from local courts—and plans for a special court to oversee expungement have been dropped.