Global Ganja Report

President Donlad Trump on April 18 signed an executive order calling on the DEA and FDA to open legal pathways for research into the therapeutic benefits of certain Schedule I psychedelic drugs—prominently including ibogaine, with an emphasis on its potential to treat PTSD in military veterans. The order instructs the FDA to collaborate with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the private sector "to increase clinical trial participation and evidence generation surrounding experimental psychedelic therapies." 

The District of Columbia filed a lawsuit Aug. 15 challenging President Donald Trump's emergency order placing the city’s police department under federal control. Four days earlier, the Trump administration had declared a crime emergency in the nation's capital, and announced the federal takeover of the force. Trump invoked his emergency powers under Section 740 of the DC Home Rule Act, which grants the president authority over local police during "special conditions of an emergency nature."

President Donald Trump has appointed veteran DEA agent Derek Maltz as acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Maltz is a notorious old-school hardliner where cannabis is concerned. In an interview last year, he recycled the discredited notion that cannabis is a "gateway drug" that leads to mental health problems. Maltz has previously linked the plant to school shootings. 

Even as the edifice of cannabis prohibition crumbles state by state, the federal illegality of the plant and its psychoactive compound THC continues to drive a quest for loopholes in the relevant statutes.


The latest such legal artifice concerns Delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol — a less potent cannabinoid than the more common and notorious Delta-9 THC. Is there truth to the claim that hemp-derived Delta-8 THC was inadvertently legalized by the 2018 Farm Bill?

As first reported by Buzzfeed News, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is expanding its powers so that it can assist "to the maximum extent possible in the federal law enforcement response" to the wave of ongoing nationwide protests that have followed the killing of George Floyd by a member of the Minneapolis police.

Having cannabis removed from the federal list of controlled substances has long been the holy grail of legalization advocates. Several bills have now been introduced on Capitol Hill to do exactly that. Do any stand a chance of becoming law in the current polarized climate?

A ground-breaking study is set to begin in Australia, to determine if cannabis can improve the quality of life of those suffering from dementia. Elderly care facilities are watching closely, hoping cannabis will prove a key to help those they look after lead happier lives, with less medication.

The US Surgeon General has launched a new campaign hyping the supposed dangers of cannabis—a further disappointment for activists who held out hope that Trump harbored libertarian instincts and would legalize. All too predictably, the anti-legalization assumptions behind the new campaign are amply refuted by actual research.