Global Ganja Report

California's medicinal cannabis growers see a downside to the normalization of their profession: the "Wal-Marting" of weed. The Oakland City Council this week will consider licensing four cannabis production facilities to service the medical market. Winning applicants would have to pay $211,000 in annual permit fees, carry $2 million worth of liability insurance and pay up to 8% of gross sales in taxes. This has raised fears that such measures could drive "mom and pop" growers out of business.

The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Michigan, in partnership with the law firm of Daniel W. Grow, PLLC, has filed a lawsuit  against Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and the manager of its Battle Creek store for wrongfully firing an employee for using medicinal marijuana in accordance with state law to treat the painful symptoms of an inoperable brain tumor and cancer.

A multi-agency federal task force on July 7 descended on the property of Joy Greenfield of Covelo, the first Mendocino County patient to pay the $1,050 application fee under the county medical marijuana ordinance, which allows collectives to grow up to 99 plants provided they comply with regulations. Greenfield had applied in the name of her collective, Light The Way, which opened in San Diego earlier this year.

A proposed ordinance going before Oakland City Council’s Public Safety Committee next week aims to curtail indoor cannabis growers in the city by regularizing major producers for the medical market. Councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan and Larry Reid propose permitting four large, industrial-scale cultivators, who would then supply Oakland’s six dispensaries (the ordinance would add two dispensaries to the currently permitted four) with the 6,000 pounds of cannabis the dispensaries sell a year.

A New Jersey lawmaker who was instrumental in passage of a medical marijuana law back in January is now suggesting that the state's premier university become a national center for research into the plant and its beneficial properties.

The first ever High Times Medical Cannabis Cup was held this week in San Francisco. For two days hundreds of guests shelled out $60 a head to pack the Terra Gallery on Harrison Street, where an "all-star" panel of High Times cultivation writers and California medical marijuana experts picked the best product from dispensaries around the Bay Area. 

On July 3, medical marijuana users can head out to Quixote’s True Blue bar in Denver, Colorodo, to experience the HomeGrown Freedom Festival, a gathering and concert exclusively for MMJ patients. This gathering is designed to connect patients with the local dispensaries and caregivers that best fit the individual’s needs.

A new drug made from cannabis has been licensed in the UK. Sativex, a tincture of extracts from the plant, is sprayed under the tongue up to 12 times a day, as a treatment for the stiffness and spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis. The Home Office has rated it as having zero abuse potential. Britain is the first country to give the drug full regulatory approval, although Canada gave Sativex a limited license to treat neuropathic pain in 2005. It is made from plants grown at a secret location in southern England by GW Pharmaceuticals, whose shares have risen 60% in the last six months in anticipation of the new product.