Global Ganja Report

In unsettling news for the country's peace process with the FARC guerillas, Colombia registered a record-shattering 50% increase in coca-leaf cultivation last year, according to the latest report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The figures, released by UNODC's Integrated Illicit Crops Monitoring System (SIMCI) and reported by Bogotá daily El Tiempo July 14, show 146.000 hectares under coca cultivation in 2016, compared to 96.000 in 2015—actually a 52% jump.

Spain's restive northeastern region of Catalonia and especially its freewheeling capital Barcelona have over the past years come to rival the Netherlands and and Amsterdam as a European cannabis hub. Smokers' clubs have proliferated, tolerated (and regulated) by the authroities. Now the regional government, the Generalitat de Catalunya, has passed a measure formally legalizing the clubs.

A local Hindu deity has issued an edict ordering that guest-houses that cater to cannabis-imbibing tourists in a remote Indian village be shut down. That's the gist of the startling headline in Hindustan Times of July 11. Malana village, high in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh, is famous for its premium-quality hashish, but has traditionally been isolated from the outside world. Now village elders fear the community's unique culture is threatened by the swarms of tourists drawn by Malana's storied bhang.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) last week issued its World Drug Report 2017—its 20th annual survey of production, trafficking and eradication and enforcement efforts around the globe. In past years, the report has sought to quantify the amount of cannabis cultivated in each producer country—over the past decade consistently placing Morocco in first place, generally followed by Mexico and Paraguay. This general trend continues—with some new variations.

Authorities in South Korea have long boasted that the country is "drug free," but that fiction is getting harder to maintain. Korea JoongAang Daily on July 6 reports that the amount of drugs seized by customs agents in the Republic of Korea jumped significantly in the first half of this year. The Customs Service said it seized 27.5 kilograms (60.6 pounds) of drugs worth 41.3 billion won ($35.9 million) in the first six months of 2017.

Cuba is opening up its economy to private busineses and foreign investors, hoping for an end to the US embargo, and attracting record numbers of internaitonal tourists. But the new open atmosphere is definitely not extending to cannabis. In announcing a big increase in interceptions of illegal drugs this year, the nation's drug czar just took an open swipe at other Latin American countries that are embracing legalization, decriminalization or medical marijuana.

Three of the Balkan states to emerge from the ashes of Yugoslavia a generation ago are now among the first countries in the ex-communist world to move toward embrace of medical marijuana.

The First Argentine Congress on Cannabis and Health was held last week at the National University of La Plata (UNLP), bringing together academics, activists, cultivators and patients from across the Southern Cone country. The focus was on expanding the extremely limited medical marijuana law passed in Argentina earlier this year. At the opening ceremony, held in an auditorium within La Plata's provinicial legislature building, UNLP president Raúl Perdomo pledged to "work to make the regulations for the recently approved law include the national universities in cultivation and research."