Global Ganja Report

The results of the Nov. 8 elections really indicate the schizophrenic nature of American political culture at this moment. Amid the fear and loathing over the election of the fascistic Donald Trump as president, big gains were registered for cannabis freedom. Voters in California approved Proposition 64, legalizing  up to an ounce for those 21 and older, and allowing individuals to grow up to six plants. The measure also permits retail sales and imposes a 15% tax. Similar measures passed in Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada, bringing the percentage of Americans living in states where cannabis is legal for adults up from five to 20 percent. Only Arizona's Proposition 205 was rejected by the voters.

Businessman Zhenli Ye Gon, accused of producing and trafficking methamphetamine, was extradited to Mexico Oct. 18. Placed by US Marshals on a flight from Virginia to Mexico City, he was upon his arrival immediately taken to the country's top-security lock-up, the notorious Altiplano Prison. The turn-over comes after he lost a nine-year legal battle against extradition from the US, BBC reports. Zhenli Ye Gon fled to the United States in 2007 after Mexican police seized $205 million in cash from his Mexico City villa. As South China Morning Post notes, this was hailed as the biggest cash haul in the history of global drug enforcement. Authorities say he was importing vast quantities of precursor chemicals for meth production. Ye Gon, who has dual Chinese and Mexican citizenship, denies the charges, maintaining that his company, Unimed Pharm Chem Mexico, was producing legal prescription drugs.

Multiple court cases in Nevada are prompting a second look at the state's medical marijuana law. In a sometimes heated courtroom session, Clark County District Judge Douglas Smith heard arguments Sept. 16 in the case of six defendants arrested last November in a raid of Jolly Green Meds co-op on Las Vegas' famed Sahara Ave. On Sept. 12, the county's Judge Donald Mosley threw out a grand jury indictment in a case concerning the Sin City Co-Op, also of Las Vegas, and also shut down in a raid. Mosley ruled that the grand jury wasn't shown enough evidence to indicate that an undercover officer illegally obtained cannabis at the co-op. (Las Vegas Sun, Sept. 16)