Global Ganja Report

Ann Arbor's Hash Bash marked its 46th annual celebration of cannabis culture, with public smoking, no arrests—and an activist call to arms to get a legalization measure passed in Michigan this November.

The Hash Bash was a landmark counterculture event when it was launched on the University of Michigan's Diag on April 1, 1972. This year, organizers were openly hoping it would be the last one before cannabis is legalized in the Wolverine State—and urging a push to make it so.

Longtime California cannabis crusader Dennis Peron, who probably did more than any other one human being to bring about legalization of medical marijuana, died Jan. 27 at a San Francisco veteran's hospital, following a battle with lung cancer. He was 72. Peron was the prime mover behind San Francisco's Proposition P, the 1991 voter initiative that made the city the first government entity in the US to officially embrace medical marijuana, deprioritizing police enforcement for medicinal users.

So California's rebel rednecks think they're taking Humboldt County with them when they leave the state, it appears. The latest split-the-state initiative was unveiled at a Sacramento press conference Jan. 16, covered by USA Today. "The current state of California has become governed by a tyranny," the group declared. Their proposed solution is to form the state of "New California," taking most of the rural counties with them, and leaving behind the heavily urbanized coast.

Media accounts mostly played it for laughs when a confused pot dealer cluelessly got into a police car outside Copenhagen's famous squatter community of Christiania on Dec. 21, apparently thinking it was a taxi-cab. The cops searched him and found 1,000 pre-rolled joints.

Dana Beal, a longtime fixture in New York City's cannabis activist scene, is once again back in the slammer. In this new misadventure Dec. 16, Beal was popped by sheriff's deputies in Northern California's Trinity County. He was reportedly pulled over near the town of Hayfork, and is currently being held in the jail at county seat Weaverville.

Both the absurdity of the war on drugs and the depravity of the current administration in Washington are illustrated by the maddening case of Alvin Queen, an internationally acclaimed jazz drummer who was denied entry to the US due to a minor drug arrest when he was still a teen—despite the fact that he was born in the country!

The networking group CannaGather held its fifth confab at lower Manhattan's Galvanize venue Sept. 28, bringing together some 200 entrepreneurs, investors, press and activists from throughout the New York metropolitan area. Inspired by the New York tech industry meet-ups of the dot-com boom in the late '90s, CannaGather hopes to similarly connect people in a burgeoning industry and help spur its growth.

The family of late reggae legend Peter Tosh announced June 22 that the superstar's son has been left in a coma following a beating in a New Jersey jail, where he was serving a six-month sentence on a marijuana possession charge.