Global Ganja Report

Cannabis is turning into a key issue testing the limits of First Nations sovereignty in Canada—right up there with the long-standing struggles over oil, mineral, timber and hydro-electric development. At least one First Nation is operating a cannabis outlet without provincial authorization, in a direct challenge to authorities. And if accommodations are not reached with provincial and federal regulators, more may be set to follow.

Over the past weeks, dozens of people across several states have experienced serious lung problems, even requiring hospitalization, apparently after using vape cartridges. It is unclear if cannabis products were at issue in all such cases, and authorities are still investigating. But the illicit market in unregulated knock-off dab carts may be to blame.

The prosecutor for Miami-Dade County is the latest of several around the country to halt minor cannabis cases. The move was prompted by a dilemma vexing law enforcement nationwide: the inability to distinguish between THC and legal CBD in confiscated samples.

Things have moved slowly in authoritarian Thailand since passage of a medical marijuana law last year. But now one of the country's leading universities is launching a "Ganja Studies Department," and attendant research facility. With plans to train a new generation of cultivators and entrepreneurs, the crafters of the program are voicing aspirations to make Thailand Asia's cannabis leader.

In Washington state, glitches in the "seed-to-sale" tracking system nearly paralyzed the cannabis industry statewide last month, costing retailers hundreds of thousands of dollars and forcing temporary lay-offs of employees. Similar headlines have been seen from across the country's legalized states—pointing to a persistent issue.

The US Department of Agriculture is opening an Industrial Hemp Germplasm Repository, in conjunction with upstate New York's Cornell University. The facility is envisioned as a major hub for genetic analysis and research, helping to spur the hemp industry's growth regionally and nationally.

Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard has won support from many activists for her embrace of cannabis legalization (as well as her anti-war rhetoric). Gabbard has been more fearless in her disregard of the cannabis stigma than any of the others in the Democratic field.

An ICE raid in the LA district of Echo Park sparked local outrage, with a longtime resident and pregnant mother of two detained for deportation—despite the fact that the agents apparently had no warrant. Her family is now left struggling—and it all seems based on a cannabis conviction from many years ago.