Global Ganja Report

Despite repeated pledges by the New York Police Department and Mayor Bill de Blasio to lift the police pressure on cannabis, and especially to address the long-standing racial disparity in pot busts, all too little seems to be changing in Gotham. In a sometimes heated session, New York's City Council held hearings Feb. 26 to discuss new stats showing that despite a significant drop in cannabis arrests, the overwhelming majority of those busted remain Black and Latino.

New York City, despite its liberal reputation, has long been the marijuana arrest capital of the USA. So many herbal advocates were heartened by the recent poll (carried out by Emerson College on behalf of the Marijuana Policy Project and Drug Policy Alliance) finding that 62% of New York's registered voters support legalizing and taxing cannabis to help close the state's budget gap, with 28% opposed. But some activists are quick to remind us that even as the public comes around on the question, all too little has changed on the city's streets.

The networking group CannaGather held its fifth confab at lower Manhattan's Galvanize venue Sept. 28, bringing together some 200 entrepreneurs, investors, press and activists from throughout the New York metropolitan area. Inspired by the New York tech industry meet-ups of the dot-com boom in the late '90s, CannaGather hopes to similarly connect people in a burgeoning industry and help spur its growth.

Civil rights organizations in New York are trying to determine if police and school officials on Long Island helped federal authorities detain students in the country illegally on the basis of dubious claims of ties to Central American gangs. The controversy comes days after President Trump's inflammatory speech before law enforcement officers in Long Island's Suffolk County on July 28. There was a major outcry over Trump's urging of police to be "rough" with suspects in the speech. This outrage nearly eclipsed media coverage of his pledge in the speech to "destroy" the MS-13 gang network, calling its members "animals."

Be careful what you say on Facebook. New York state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, ruled on April 4 that law enforcement can seize private account information from the social networking site. With the decision, Facebook lost its years-long legal battle to block search warrants from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office seeking access to hundreds of user accounts, the New York Post reports.

The group High NY, "New York's Cannabis Community," hosted an event on "How to Apply Your Skills in the Cannabis Industry" at a Lower Manhattan venue the evening of March 22, featuring speakers with background in the biz from California, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Unlike these three polities, New York state has not legalized. But organizers took heart that on that very same day as their meet-up, chronic pain was added to the qualifying conditions under the Empire State's burgeoning if still limited medical marijuana program.

A rather sensationalistic piece in the New York Times last month luridly headlined: "Drug 85 Times as Potent as Marijuana Caused a 'Zombielike' State in Brooklyn." Apparently, emergency medical technicians called to a "mass casualty event" in Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood reported multiple people at the scene, "all of whom had a degree of altered mental status that was described by bystanders as 'zombielike,'" according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Blood and urine samples drawn from eight of the 18 men hospitalized that day revealed they had taken a synthetic cannabinoid called AMB-FUBINACA, originally developed by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, with the street names "AK-47" or "24 Karat Gold." It is said to be 85 times as potent as the main agent in natural cannabis, THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol.

A little New York-California cross-fertilization of herbal consciousness took place as Martin Lee, the author of Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana, spoke in Manhattan's East Village the night of Nov. 10 on "The Future of CBD and Medicinal Cannabis." Lee discussed his current work with California-based Project CBD, dedicated to promoting and publicizing research into the medical uses of cannabidiol, and Emerald Pharms, his CBD-oriented dispensary in Hopland, southern Medocino County. The event was hosted by The Alchemist's Kitchen, a New Age-flavored herbal apothecary—or "botanical dispensary"—on East 1st Street. Under New York state's medical marijuana law, the Kitchen recently launched a Bowery Cannabis Club, which specializes in CBD products.