Global Ganja Report

Well, the dust has hardly settled but the boots are at the door; they might come storming through, riling up that dust some more.

But we hope not. The boots belong to the Justice Department and the door belongs to the states of Washington and Colorado. The dust is the election that saw those two states make the biggest moves toward cannabis legalization any state has made in a long long time. No, neither law is perfect, and it is going to be a cold day in hell probably before state stores are up and running. But still, the fact that the voters got out there and said enough is enough and let's get something on legalization out there is very freaking refreshing. Ask anyone who works in any capacity to end the drug war: Wins are few and far between. It took more than 10 years of effort to rein in law enforcement's forfeiture spree; it took a lot longer than that to get New York's racist Rockefeller sentencing laws even semi-tossed. So what happened in Washington and Colorado is in the win column, though we cannot be at all sure that the feds are not going to come in and try to muck things up like they have with California's and Oregon’s medical marijuana laws.

On April 2, a bipartisan group of legislators from five medical marijuana states—California, Colorado, Maine, New Mexico, and Washington—issued an open letter to President Barack Obama opposing the federal crackdown and calling upon his administration to "respect our state laws." The lawmakers underscored that such an aggressive policy "makes no sense" and is "not a good use of our resources," recalling Obama's original pledge to de-emphasize enforcement in states with medical marijuana laws.

Medical marijuana advocates in Montana are condemning recent arson attempts against two local dispensaries. Two separate attempts to set fire to medicinal cannabis dispensaries occurred last week in Billings. At both locations, the words "Not in Our Town" were spray-painted on the storefronts. These acts of intimidation come as the city is considering a temporary ban or moratorium on new dispensaries, in order to allow for the development of a regulatory ordinance.