Global Ganja Report

Another dispensary is raided by police in Toronto—the latest in a string of such busts in the city over the past months, with some outlets even shut down. It's an irony that this crackdown comes as Canada is in its final countdown to legalization, and opens questions about whether there will be a place for independent dispensaries and small growers under the imminent new regulation regime.

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.

Just little over a week before legalization took effect in California on Jan. 1, state police stopped a truck hauling 1,875 pounds of cannabis in Mendocino County, seizing the goods and slapping the two occupants with misdemeanor possession charges. This despite the fact that they were hauling for their employer, Ukiah-based Old Kai Logistics, and had paperwork showing the firm is licensed by county authorities. It remains to be seen if prosecutors will pursue the case in light of legalization, and the affair has enflamed suspicions between growers and authorities at a critical moment.

Longtime California cannabis crusader Dennis Peron, who probably did more than any other one human being to bring about legalization of medical marijuana, died Jan. 27 at a San Francisco veteran's hospital, following a battle with lung cancer. He was 72. Peron was the prime mover behind San Francisco's Proposition P, the 1991 voter initiative that made the city the first government entity in the US to officially embrace medical marijuana, deprioritizing police enforcement for medicinal users.

A new study published in The Economic Journal vindicates the optimistic prognosis of cannabis activists that legalizing the herb would de-escalate drug war violence. The study notes a reduction in violence in US states along the Mexican border in recent years, and especially in the counties along the international line. The authors draw a connection to the reduced legal pressure on cannabis in the United States over this same period, thanks to legalization and medical marijuana laws.

Many things are falling into place as Canada advances toward legal cannabis, expected to take effect this summer. Provinces are to come up with their own policies on regulation, and these are now congealing. The government of Nova Scotia has agreed on a plan to market retail cannabis at liquor stores through the provincial public company that now maintains a monopoly on alcohol sales, the Canadian Broadcasting Company reports. At the other end of the continent, British Columbia is also said to be considering such a plan.

As California legalizes cannabis on Jan. 1, it will be opening the door to multiple conflicts with the federal government. How state and federal authorities manage to negotiate the overlapping jurisdictions with now completely contradictory policies will be interesting to watch. In one obvious example, the Associated Press notes that state legalization won't stop federal agents from seizing even in small quantities at checkpoints they maintain on the Golden State's busy freeways.

Media accounts mostly played it for laughs when a confused pot dealer cluelessly got into a police car outside Copenhagen's famous squatter community of Christiania on Dec. 21, apparently thinking it was a taxi-cab. The cops searched him and found 1,000 pre-rolled joints.