Global Ganja Report

There is jubilation among cannabis advocates in Thailand after authorities announced a change to the narcotics code allowing personal cultivation—a breakthrough for the Asian continent. But does the reform really presage full legalization?

An official study in New York reveals numerous false positives in drug tests carried out by the state prison system, with hundreds of inmates punished (sometimes quite harshly) for imbibing that did not actually take place —including for cannabinoids. 

Amid continued federal intransigence on recognizing cannabis as legitimate medicine for military veterans, advocates take heart in legislation pending on Capitol Hill that would mandate that the VA study the question.

Military veterans continue to be denied much-needed treatment by the VA because of their cannabis use, even in states that have legalized. While there has been some progress on the question, vets are still being cut off—amid a combined national crisis of veteran suicides and opioid abuse.

Having funded their long insurgency with opium and hashish, the Taliban are poised to establish a “narco-state” in Afghanistan. The multi-billion dollar 20-year US effort to suppress cultivation of illicit crops in the county failed as dramatically as its war against the Taliban. Exports of Taliban-tainted smack and hash are already reaching Europe, and may reach US shores.

As political and legal space opens for cannabis in state after state, the idea of caps on the potency — whether of flower, extracts or edibles — is gaining currency. But voices in the cannabis industry view this as a phobic response rooted in the flawed assumptions of prohibition.

Voters in Arizona, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, Oregon and South Dakota passed statewide ballot measures favoring medical marijuana, adult-use cannabis legalization or hemp cultivation in the Nov. 3 elections.

Martin Luther King Jr never spoke about cannabis, but his life and works have much to say about the fight for legalization, and against the "New Jim Crow" of the war on drugs.