Global Ganja Report

With Canada on a final one-month countdown to legal cannabis, the country's provinces are adopting widely varying regulation regimes, creating a "crazy quilt" policy patchwork. While Ontario and Quebec are opting for provincial government monopolies on retail sales, Alberta and Saskatchewan have embraced a private model, sparking a flood of canna-capital into these western provinces.

The city of Seattle has filed a motion to vacate hundreds of marijuana convictions going back more than 20 years. As these convictions disproportionately affected people of color, this is being hailed as an important step toward "cannabis equity"—implementing legalization in a way that addresses the social injustices associated with prohibition.

A British Columbia firm which is one of Canada's leading licensed producers of medical marijuana has entered a partnership with the national subsidiary of Sandoz, a global leader in the pharmaceutical industry. The deal is being hailed as a milestone that signals the arrival of cannabis in the corporate economy.

On the heels of December's British Columbia high court decision striking down mandatory minimum prison terms for cannabis defendants as "cruel and unusual punishment" in contravention of Canada's constitution, the provincial court system has now just applied similar principles to use of solitary confinement.

Many things are falling into place as Canada advances toward legal cannabis, expected to take effect this summer. Provinces are to come up with their own policies on regulation, and these are now congealing. The government of Nova Scotia has agreed on a plan to market retail cannabis at liquor stores through the provincial public company that now maintains a monopoly on alcohol sales, the Canadian Broadcasting Company reports. At the other end of the continent, British Columbia is also said to be considering such a plan.

The Appeal Court of British Columbia, the province's highest, on Dec. 28 upheld a lower court ruling that the minimum two-year prison term for marijuana possession "for purpose of trafficking" under Canada's Controlled Drugs & Substances Act is unconstitutional. Justice Sunni Stromberg-Stein dismissed the Crown's appeal of a 10-month sentence imposed when Phillip Francis McGee pleaded guilty after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided his home in Surrey.

A bill signed by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Aug. 15 makes the Beaver State the latest to reduce the penalty for personal-use possession of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs from a felony to a misdemeanor. The state which famously was the first to decriminalize cannabis in 1973 is again leading the way to a more rational and humane drug policy.

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.