Global Ganja Report

New York City's Cannabis Parade, flagship entry in the Global Marijuana March movement and a counterculture event dating back to the early 1970s, this year actually drew mainstream politicians and candidates. Nearly all struck themes of racial justice, emphasizing that a push for legalization in the Empire State must also address the social iniquities of cannabis prohibition and the "war on drugs."

The city of Seattle has filed a motion to vacate hundreds of marijuana convictions going back more than 20 years. As these convictions disproportionately affected people of color, this is being hailed as an important step toward "cannabis equity"—implementing legalization in a way that addresses the social injustices associated with prohibition.

With a bombshell homespun video statement, New York's gadfly celebrity gubernatorial hopeful Cynthia Nixon has—for the moment, at least—placed the cannabis legalization question front and center in the race. Incumbent Andrew Cuomo, feeling the pressure from Nixon's challenge, is already starting to waver from his once intransigent stance against legalization.

District of Columbia activists actually passed out joints to city lawmakers in their effort to press them on a law to permit cannabis sales in the nation's capital. They've also tried to win this through ballot initiative, building on 2014's Initiative 71 that legalized possession of herb in DC. But councilmembers say their hands are tied by a Congressional stricture on any further lifting of the legal pressure on cannabis.

Oakland's city council has passed an ordinance protecting tenants from being evicted by cannabis businesses in the city's "Green Zone." Artist housing in post-industrial areas is especially at risk. Oakland is committed to a policy of "cannabis equity," in which the cannabis economy is daylighted with a sense of social justice. But this does point to the dilemma of cannabis-fueled displacement—a phenomenon also reported from places like the more freewheeling Denver, which are less committed to principles of equity.

A recent court decision regarding a seemingly prosaic controversy over the zoning of medical marijuana businesses in Detroit actually sheds light on issues of what some activists are calling "cannabis equity"—how questions of social and racial justice related to the war on drugs will be addressed as the industry is day-lighted.