Global Ganja Report

Dubbed the "Wal-Mart of Weed," the 10,000-square-foot weGrow store, set to open this weekend at 1537 Fulton Ave. in Sacramento, is the first franchise for a company that calls itself a supply and training destination for legal cannabis cultivators. The enterprise started in Oakland last year as a warehouse store called iGrow. Now the Oakland location is being reorganized as a distribution hub for a network of retail hydroponics outlets. The Sacramento store—billed as "the first honest hydro store"—is to be followed by weGrow stores in Arizona, Colorado, New Jersey and Oregon in coming months.

Conspiracy crank Kurt Nimmo on the perennially loopy InfoWars.com turns to California's Proposition 19 for his latest fanstay fodder, picking up on a pipedream already spun by "Stoners Against Legalization." It goes something like this: Gazillionaire investor George Soros, an underwriter of 1996's Proposition 215 (as well as pro-democracy movements throughout the post-communist world), made a last-minute $1 million donation to the pro-19 campaign. It turns out he is also a big investor in the evil biotech giant Monsanto (and lots of other things, God knows). Therefore, Prop 19 is all a scam to allow Monsanto to develop GMO "terminator cannabis," wipe out home-growers and dominate the market with patented "non-active" varieties!

Doc Green's Healing Collective, producers of the cannabis-infused Doc Green's Therapeutic Healing Cream, has received a letter from Wells Fargo sating that the business' account has been closed pending review—citing the "nature of the business." Doc Green's co-founder Ramona Moonflower Rubin told Global Ganja Report business is now paralyzed, and the collective is considering its options. Rubin notes the irony: "We are producers of topical cannabis products that don't have any psychoactive effect. They don't get users high, they just provide pain relief when applied directly to the affected area."

California Beer & Beverage Distributors, an industry lobbying group, is sinking money into the campaign to oppose Proposition 19, the November ballot initiative that would legalize cannabis in the state. "[I]t donated $10,000 to Public Safety First, a committee organized to oppose the proposition, on Sept. 7, 2010, though the contribution was only recently made public," reports The Huffington Post "The alcohol industry has long seen illicit drugs as a threat to sales, as consumers may substitute pot for booze. A night spent on the couch smoking marijuana and watching television is a night not spent at the bar."

Children are being trafficked into the UK to work in so-called "cannabis factories," according to a new police report. The "factories" are typically located in private houses, but sometimes in agricultural and commercial properties. A study for the Association of Chief Police Officers has found children are being used to tend crops, to illegally divert electricity for the factories, and to break into rival sites.

Mexico's former president Vicente Fox wrote on his blog Aug. 8 that "we should consider legalizing the production, distribution and sale of drugs"—the most far-reaching stand for legalization yet in Mexico, where more than 28,000 people have died during the current administration's war against drug cartels. The proposal is sparking the predictable backlash from hardliners, as AP reports...

The City Commission in Royal Oak, Mich., unanimously rejected a request Aug. 9 to suspend the city's moratorium on commercial facilities involving medical marijuana, blocking an effort by warehouse owner James Canner to turn his building into what could have become the state's largest cannabis growing facility.

Oakland's City Council July 20 approved regulations permitting what the San Francisco Chronicle called "industrial-scale" cannabis farms—over the protests of small growers who fear they will be squeezed out of the industry they helped build. To address such concerns, the council pledged to create regulations for small and medium-size grow operations later this year.