Global Ganja Report

The results of the Nov. 8 elections really indicate the schizophrenic nature of American political culture at this moment. Amid the fear and loathing over the election of the fascistic Donald Trump as president, big gains were registered for cannabis freedom. Voters in California approved Proposition 64, legalizing  up to an ounce for those 21 and older, and allowing individuals to grow up to six plants. The measure also permits retail sales and imposes a 15% tax. Similar measures passed in Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada, bringing the percentage of Americans living in states where cannabis is legal for adults up from five to 20 percent. Only Arizona's Proposition 205 was rejected by the voters.

Amid a shameful paucity of media coverage, inmates at facilities in several states have organized work stoppages following a call for a nationwide prison strike to begin on Sept. 9—the anniversary of the 1971 Attica prison uprising. Organizers say inmates in at least 29 prisons in 12 states have launched strikes, with an unprecedented more than 24,000 prisoners participating. "This is a call to end slavery," reads the official call for the strike, issued by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. "They cannot run these facilities without us." While there have been prison strikes before—two earlier this year, in Texas and Alabama—this marks the first one to be nationally coordinated. Prisoners are using social media and smuggled cell phones to organize the national strike.

Arkansas cannabis activists were evidently so eager to get a legalization measure before the voters that they shot themselves in the foot by submitting ballot language ridden with grammatical errors. Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said she was forced to reject a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize the herb after finding a number of grammar and spelling bloopers. Rutledge said that even if the folks behind the "Arkansas Cannabis Amendment" had run spell-and-grammar checks before handing in the proposal, it still wouldn't have passed muster.

Cannabis is set to become legal in Colorado and Washington after voters passed historic ballot initiatives on Nov. 6. In Washington voters approved Initiative 502, allowing possession and distribution of cannabis through a state licensing system of growers, processors and stores, where adults will be able to buy up to an ounce of dried cannabis; up to a pound of a cannabis-infused product, such as brownies; or up to 72 ounces of cannabis-infused liquids.. The Colorado initiative actually introduces Amendment 64 to the state constitution, allowing adults over 21 to possess up to an ounce and to privately grow up to six plants—although public use will be banned. In Oregon, the similar Cannabis Tax Act Initiative or Measure 80, failed by approximately 55-to-45% of the vote.

The Arkansas Supreme Court announced Sept. 27 that it will allow the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act  ballot initiative to go before the voters in November. The decision came in a suit brought by the Coalition to Preserve Arkansas Values (CPAV), which argued that the initiative text was "insufficient" as the full ballot title of the act is 384 words long and that "voters will not have adequate time in the voting booth to be reasonably advised on the impact of the Act." CPAV also claimed that the initiative would have been contrary to the US and Arkansas constitutions. In denying the  CPAV's claims, the court found that the text is free of "misleading tendencies or partisan coloring," and that the summary "informs the voters in an intelligible, honest and impartial manner" about what the measure would do.

A conservative Arkansas group seeking to prevent the state from becoming the first in the South to allow medical marijuana filed a lawsuit on Aug. 30 to remove an initiative from the November election ballot. The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act qualified for the ballot after a statewide petition drive gathered the required amount of signatures. But the suit, filed in the state Supreme Court by the Coalition to Preserve Arkansas Values, argues the ballot's title is misleading and the text vaguely worded.