Global Ganja Report

A UC San Diego student left in a federal holding cell for days without food and water has filed a $20 million lawsuit against the government. Daniel Chong, 23, was picked up in a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raid April 21. After questioning him, agents told him that he would not be charged and to wait in the holding cell until they finished the paperwork to release him. He spent four days alone in the cell, apparently forgotten.

Four Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport screeners in Los Angeles were arrested April 24 for accepting bribes from drug traffickers. Two current and two former Los Angeles International Airport screeners are accused of looking the other way as cocaine, cannabis and methamphetamine stuffed into carry-on bags passed through their X-ray machines—in exchange for payments of as much as $2,400—on five separate occasions. "This case underscores the unique nature of 21st century drug smuggling," said Briane Grey the acting Special Agent in Charge of the DEA office in Los Angeles. "The defendants traded on their positions at one the world's most crucial airport security checkpoints and used their special access for criminal ends." (UPI, Reuters, April 25)

The 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals in San Francisco April 9 issued a ruling that may open the way for protection of sacramental cannabis use under federal law. While the decision found that the government does not have to compensate a Native American church for seized cannabis, it also allowed Michael Rex "Raging Bear" Mooney and the Oklevueha Native American Church of Hawaii to fight for declaratory and injunctive relief barring the government from enforcing the Controlled Substances Act against their followers.

A coalition of medical marijuana patients, activists, dispensing centers, and concerned citizens has compelled public officials to stand up to recent federal attacks. Last week, the new coalition "San Francisco United for Safe Access" held a press conference with several city supervisors and state officials, decrying the Obama administration's aggressive tactics before a crowd of more than 500 supporters. By Friday April 6, San Francisco United had secured a statement from Mayor Ed Lee, expressing his opposition to "recent federal actions targeting duly permitted medicinal cannabis dispensaries...that aim to limit our citizens’ ability to have safe access to the medicine they need."

Dozens of federal agents on April 2 raided Oakland's famed Oaksterdam University and the Lake Merritt area apartment of its owner Richard Lee, California's most prominent cannabis advocate. The armed agents, some wearing face masks, came to the locations with a battering ram, sledgehammer and power saws. Agents from the DEA, IRS and Marshals Service carted away loads of cannabis as well as numerous file boxes, did but not reveal the purpose of the raids, other than to call it part of an "ongoing investigation."

The country's leading medical marijuana advocacy group, Americans for Safe Access (ASA), filed an appeal brief Jan. 26 in the DC Circuit to compel the federal government to reclassify cannabis for medical use. In July 2011, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) denied a petition filed in 2002 by the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC). The petition was denied only after the coalition sued the government for unreasonable delay. The ASA brief is an appeal of the rescheduling denial.

Agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) worked with an informant and with Mexican enforcement agents in 2007 to launder millions of dollars for Mexico's Beltrán Leyva cartel, according to reports in the New York Times and the Mexican magazine emeequis. The information comes from the Mexican government's response to a US request for the extradition of Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, a Colombian trafficker arrested in Mexico in 2010.

On Jan. 11—at exactly 4:20 PM—three medical marijuana dispensaries in the city of San Diego were raided by the cross-jurisdictional Narcotic Task Force (NTF) of San Diego County. The locations attacked included California's Best Meds on University Ave., Golden West in North Park, and San Diego Organic Wellness Association in Pacific Beach. Armed with handguns, rifles, and battering rams, dozens of masked NTF officers rushed into the facilities, breaking down doors and windows, and forcing all patients inside to the floor.