Global Ganja Report

The Control of Narcotics Substance Court in the Pakistani port of Karachi sentenced five men to life imprisonment on Aug. 6. The Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) arrested the five in a raid in Mauripur last July, seizing 5,195 kilograms of hashish. Special Judge Imdad Hussain Khoso sentenced all five to life terms and fines of 100,000 rupees.

Turkey's Anatolian Agency reports that 11,8 tons of hashish have been seized by special security services in the eastern province of Diyarbakir within seven months. A total of 137 police operations against hashish traffickers have been carried out, with 542 arrested and 90 remaining in custody. All confiscated drugs were reportedly destroyed. (Focus, Aug. 2)

With Israeli tokers already irritable over a cannabis drought (the result of a literal drought, which has impacted farmers throughout the Jewish state and Occupied Palestinian Territories), organizers of a planned legalization rally in Tel Aviv were dealt another blow when city authorities denied them a permit.

C-15, the draconian anti-cannabis legislation that has been languishing in Canada's parliament, was reintroduced May 5 by MP Rob Nicholson (Tory-Ontario) as Bill S-10. The bill is slightly more lenient, with a nine-year mandatory minimum sentence kicking in at six plants, not one. It also imposes mandatory minimum sentences for making any hashish or baked goods, and a host of other offenses.

Nearly 90 people, including many members of the security forces, were sentenced in Morocco to prison terms for cannabis trafficking on March 5. The court in Casablanca handed down sentences of between three months and 10 years to most of the 87 defendants, who included 55 members of the navy, police, army and auxiliary forces. Four of the defendants were acquitted. The network, which was dismantled in a series of busts in January 2009, operated in the northern Nador region and exported more than 30 tons of hashish to Europe over several years. (Middle East  Online, March 5)

A joint force of Afghan government troops and NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) stopped a vehicle and found 1,600 pounds of hashish in Helmand province's Registan district March 21. Two people in the vehicle were detained. They admitted their intent was to deliver the drugs to Taliban members in Barham Chah, the US military said. (DoD press release, March 22)

The US State Department's latest International Narcotics Control Strategy Report warns that hashish production is again on the rise in the traditional producer. "The Lebanese government reported ongoing cannabis cultivation in 2009, and increased drug use particularly among the young, due to greater availability and reduced price of most drugs sold in Lebanon," the report states.