Global Ganja Report

Oregon voted to legalize cannabis way back in November 2014, but promises of state coffers filled with canna-dollars are apparently being held up by an arcane bureaucratic logjam. Newsweek just noted a May 5 report from Oregon's KWG News finding that the state has brought in close to $75 million in cannabis tax revenue since the start of 2016—yet not a penny has gone to actually closing Salem's yawning $1.6 billion budget deficit.

Here's some counterintuitive news for those who have been hammered all their lives with claims that cannabis causes memory loss. A new study by scientists at the University of Bonn, written up in the journal Nature Medicine, finds that aging mice treated with daily small doses of THC actually experienced a reversal of cognitive decline. That is, they started doing better on cognitive tasks, such as going though a maze. The researchers foresee potential cannabis-based treatment to fend off dementia. "If we can rejuvenate the brain so that everybody gets five to 10 more years without needing extra care then that is more than we could have imagined," said study leader Andras Bilkei-Gorzo.

Following last-minute changes, the lower house of Florida's legislature on May 2 voted 105-9 to pass HB 1397, ostensibly following through on the voter mandate to establish a medical marijuana program in the Sunshine State. But those last-minute changes included both a limit on the number of license holders—and a ban on actually smoking herbaceous cannabis. House sponsor and Republican leader Ray Rodrigues blamed fears of interference from the Trump administration, telling the Tampa Bay Times: "We have to make it legal and available to Florida residents, but we have to do it in such a way that it complies to the guidance we’ve been given by the federal government."

After Colombia's government issued long-awaited regulations on legal cannabis cultivation for the medical market, the southern region of Cauca is anticipating a boom—and a fight for the soul of the nascent industry. On April 10, the Health Ministry released Decree 613, finally implementing Colombia's promised medical marijuana program. The decree guarantees "secure and informed" access to cannabis seeds by licensed companies, fully implementing the program established in principle by Law 1787, passed in July 2016.

Mexico's lower-house Chamber of Deputies on April 28 approved a bill to allowing use, production and distribution of cannabis for medical and scientific purposes. The vote was an overwhelming 371 in favor and seven against with 11 abstentions. The legislation was already approved by the Mexican Senate in December and now goes to the desk of President Enrique Pena Nieto for his signature. The passage follows a national debate on the question in the media and various social forums across the country.

The rural marshlands of Bangladesh have become the latest part of the world to be hit by the unhappy global plague of methamphetamine use. More and more of the country's struggling peasants are taking to "yaba," little pink sugar-coated pills made from caffeine and meth that are flooding in from neighboring Burma. Annual seizures of yaba in Bangladesh increased by a jaw-dropping 80,000% over the past decade, authorities say. A disturbing on-the-scene report from Public Radio International emphasizes that in conservative and Muslim rural Bangladesh, yaba is not used as a "party drug." The speed pills are most often used to get folks through long days of hard labor.

Just three days before the deadline to avert a government shutdown, Donald Trump blinked April 25, backing off from the demand that his planned border wall receive funding (to the whopping tune of $11.4 billion) in the spending measure now before Congress. But just two days earlier, in an interview with the Associated Press, Trump again invoked the need to protect the country from drugs as mandating his wall—and making absurdly hubristic claims about its effectiveness to do so...

It is certainly a sign of the times that a partnership of major California media—led by Bay Area News Group, owner of the San Jose Mercury News—has launched a website entitled The Cannifornian, "Covering the Golden State of Cannabis." That means it's dedicated to reportage on the fast-growing cannabis sector in post-legalization California. An April 25 offering, "Venture capital investors betting big on cannabis," notes that financial consultancy firm New Frontier Data is predicting nationwide legal cannabis sales will balloon to more than $24 billion by 2025.