Global Ganja Report

A figure from the Bay Area cannabis industry was embroiled in America's fast-escalating culture wars when she threatened to call the police on a young Black girl selling water on a San Francisco street. In the outcry, she has stepped down from her own company—and helped draw a line over what behavior is considered acceptable in the cannabis community.

Something of a corporate scramble is underway to secure patents for the various curative properties of CBD, and associated products and procedures. Pharmaceutical firms see a windfall, but some activists raise concerns about the creeping privatization of a cannabinoid that should belong to the genetic and intellectual commons of the human race. How realistic are fears about the imminent arrival of "corporate cannabis"?

Seniors are the fastest growing group of medicinal cannabis users in the country, and a growing number of nursing homes from coast to coast are tolerating use of tinctures and extracts to combat dementia, insomnia and related ailments. Patient testimony is now backed up by research, with scientists identifying the mechanism by which cannabinoids slow the deterioration of neurons in the brain. But federal strictures continue to pose an obstacle to investigation—leaving medicinal users in the cold under US law.

Longtime California cannabis crusader Dennis Peron, who probably did more than any other one human being to bring about legalization of medical marijuana, died Jan. 27 at a San Francisco veteran's hospital, following a battle with lung cancer. He was 72. Peron was the prime mover behind San Francisco's Proposition P, the 1991 voter initiative that made the city the first government entity in the US to officially embrace medical marijuana, deprioritizing police enforcement for medicinal users.

California state authorities have issued new regulations governing the legal cannabis market that is to be officially instated on Jan. 1. Jointly drawn up by the Department of Health, Department of Food & Agriculture and the new Bureau of Cannabis Control, the regs are meeting with some trepidation from the Golden State's traditional cannabis sector. Most controversially, many small growers were disappointed that the regs include no limit on the number of licenses a single grower can hold or the total acreage one can farm.

The first decisive step toward the liberalized atmosphere for cannabis across much of the country was quite arguably San Francisco's Proposition P of 1991—the popular initiative that protected medical marijuana use in the city. So it's heartwarming that the City by the Bay has just established an Office of Cannabis to oversee legal sales. 

It is certainly a sign of the times that a partnership of major California media—led by Bay Area News Group, owner of the San Jose Mercury News—has launched a website entitled The Cannifornian, "Covering the Golden State of Cannabis." That means it's dedicated to reportage on the fast-growing cannabis sector in post-legalization California. An April 25 offering, "Venture capital investors betting big on cannabis," notes that financial consultancy firm New Frontier Data is predicting nationwide legal cannabis sales will balloon to more than $24 billion by 2025.

Gay pioneer and artist Gilbert Baker, famous as creator of the iconic Rainbow Flag, died in his sleep at age 65 on March 31 at his home in Manhattan. Baker's first flag was an eight-colored banner that flew above the 1978 Pride festivities in San Francisco—then the Gay Freedom Day Parade. Baker, well known for making banners for gay and anti-war street protest marches, created the flag at the behest of his friend Harvey Milk—the gay community leader later elected a San Francisco supervisor, and assassinated that November. The flag has since become a global symbol of the LGBT community—raised at pride festivals worldwide, and forever flying over the corner of Castro and Market streets.