Global Ganja Report

Cannabis advocates across the United States and the world bid a grateful farewell to Lester Grinspoon, the Harvard psychiatrist and prolific author who probably did more than any other individual to change the national conversation about marijuana, stressing the need for a more tolerant and enlightened policy.

Lockdowns and economic paralysis imposed by the COVID-19 outbreak are spurring a new emphasis on self-sufficiency. Even before the crisis, medicinal cannabis users facing shortages at local dispensaries were turning to home cultivation.

A new study in Canada on cannabis and driving casts doubt on zero-tolerance limits for THC. The study's authors say that THC can indeed impair driving—but that applying laws designed for booze to marijuana is bad science and bad policy.

This year has seen a disturbing nationwide outbreak of lung injuries, some fatal, which researchers link to vaping—either of tobacco products or cannabis concentrates. A regulatory crack-down on the vaping industry has ensued—but amid serious confusion displayed by politicians and media alike.

New York's Gov. Cuomo is broaching a cannabis common market for the tri-state area, joining with New Jersey and Connecticut to harmonize regulations and even cooperate in joint purchasing. But the move is being considered partly as a reaction to the vaping scare, and official statements reveal some dangerous confusion as to the distinction between vaping cannabis extracts and smoking actual cannabis.

Driven by the notorious market glut in Oregon, wholesale cannabis prices have predictably plunged in the Beaver State. They have done so less precipitously in other western states. But this is offset by continued high prices elsewhere in the country, especially the East Coast—making for an overall upward trend this year.

Over the past weeks, dozens of people across several states have experienced serious lung problems, even requiring hospitalization, apparently after using vape cartridges. It is unclear if cannabis products were at issue in all such cases, and authorities are still investigating. But the illicit market in unregulated knock-off dab carts may be to blame.

Some states that have legalized cannabis are seeing a surge in the illicit market—and attendant police raids and repression. The dystopia that legalization was supposed to leave behind has proved disconcertingly persistent. But is the problem, as conservatives claim, legalization itself—or that is hasn't gone far enough?