Global Ganja Report

Weeks after instating a new policy of not prosecuting for low-level marijuana violations, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr addressed a meeting of New York cannabis industry investors and entrepreneurs, where he discussed his vision for fairer policing in the city—and his study calling for legalization to be explored at the state level.

Among several cannabis-related bills that cleared California's state house before the last legislative session came to close is one that would lift the tax burden on medical marijuana providers. The bill is intended to again open space for "compassionate care," which was ironically squeezed out under California's adult-use regulation regime. 

Recent years have seen ethnic tensions in the northernmost parts of the Emerald Triangle, as Hmong growers—immigrants from the Southeast Asian nation of Laos—have established themselves in local cannabis cultivation. This has led to civil rights litigation and a polarized atmosphere in Siskiyou County. But just to the south in Trinity County, a group is working to head off tensions by helping Hmong growers negotiate the transition to licensed cultivation.

Tens of thousands of students across the United States have lost access to federal financial aid for their studies because they admit on the application form to having a drug conviction—including, of course, for cannabis. But a new bill introduced in the Senate could finally correct what student advocates have called an injustice that disproportionately denies education to the very communities most in need of financial aid..

A parliamentary initiative has been launched to legalize medical marijuana cultivation in fabled hashish producer Lebanon, amid growing proposals for a general legalization of cannabis. But many growers in the Bekaa Valley are watching warily, fearing they will be left behind as foreign capital flows in for a legal industry.

After three years of mounting discontent from patients and providers alike, Florida's medical marijuana chief Christian Bax is stepping down. He leaves office as state health authorities prepare for a tsunami of applications for a few highly coveted marijuana licenses.

New York and New Jersey are notorious rivals. Especially New York City denizens see themselves as metropolitan sophisticates and view their neighbors across the Hudson River as rubes. But the two states are now racing to see which will legalize cannabis first. There are formidable obstacles in both states, but New Jersey is clearly ahead.

Suddenly, New York state's political establishment is looking seriously at cannabis legalization, driven by growing concerns over long-entrenched racial discrimination in enforcement of the marijuana laws. But there is a growing realization that legalization alone will not be enough to correct this legacy unless it is implemented in way explicitly designed to do so.