Global Ganja Report

Medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) filed an amicus ("friend of the court") brief July 9 in a federal appeal brought by California dispensary operator Charlie C. Lynch. Lynch's case drew a lot of attention during his 2008 trial and June 2009 sentencing under the Obama Justice Department. Though Lynch was supported by local officials and the Chamber of Commerce in Morro Bay, where his state-compliant Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers (CCCC) was located, the DEA raided and shut down CCCC in 2007 anyway. A hearing in the Lynch appeal is expected this winter.

A government-sponsored study published recently in The Open Neurology Journal concludes that cannabis provides relief to some chronic pain sufferers and that more clinical trials are needed—directly challenging DEA classification of the drug under "Schedule I," that reserved for substances with no medical uses. The study, sponsored by the State of California and conducted at the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, calls the Schedule I placement "not accurate" and "not tenable."

Medical marijuana patients and their supporters will rally in front of the federal building in Sacramento June 20 at 1:30 PM to protest a raid last week on the city's first permitted dispensary. On June 11, El Camino Wellness Center was raided by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and shut down, after having served thousands of Sacramento patients since 2008. Though no charges have been filed against the dispensary operators, the Internal Revenue Service has seized the facility's bank accounts. 

Residents of the villages of Ahuas and Patuca, in the remote Miskito Coast of northeast Honduras, took to the streets May 11 to protest a deadly DEA raid, demanding the US agency leave their territory—and burning down four government offices to make their point. In the incident in the pre-dawn hours that morning on the Río Patuca, four were killed—including two pregnant women—and another four wounded when DEA agents and Honduran National Police agents in a US State Department-contracted helicopter piloted by Guatemalan military men fired on a boat they apparently believed was filled with drug traffickers. Local residents—backed up by the mayor of Ahuas municipality (Gracias a Dios department), Lucio Baquedano—say they were humble villagers who were fishing on the river, and had nothing to do with drug trafficking.

Venezuela on May 16 demanded that the US extradite a former supreme court judge who has accused high-ranking figures of the Hugo Chávez government of links to drug-trafficking. The fugitive judge, Eladio Aponte Aponte, was removed from office in March over charges that he provided forged documents to accused trafficker Walid Makled. Aponte is co-operating with US authorities after his April 2 flight to Miami in a DEA-chartered plane. Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said the US must hand over Eliado Aponte, as there was a judicial process underway against him in Venezuela, and noted that an Interpol "red notice" has been issued for him.

Federal agents from the DEA and IRS, backed up with Santa Barbara police, served search warrants at a medical marijuana dispensary and a grow house on May 2 and 3. No arrests were made, but search warrants were executed at the Pacific Coast Collective dispensary and, the next morning, at 305 E. Haley St., which was named as a grow house. Agents and detectives also searched the residences of PCC operator Charles Jeff Restivo in Carpinteria, who is already facing local felony charges related to the dispensary; and Steven Kessler in Santa Barbara, who was said to operate the cultivation site.

A May 5 report in the Sacramento Bee portrays an Emerald Triangle hard-hit by the federal crackdown on medical marijuana in California. Cultivators who sought legitimacy through the medical market are fleeing to the black market, leading to a glut—which is now ironically hurting the remnant medicinal market. With cheap weed getting dumped in the college town of Arcata, some local dispensaries say business is down 75%. The price of top-line bud has dropped from around $5,000 to under $1,000. "Last I heard, a pound of marijuana is $800 for outdoor grown," gloated Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman. "That's plummeting. You might do better with tomatoes."

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.