Global Ganja Report

The original peoples of what is now the United States were left in legal limbo in the wake of the 2018 Farm Bill, which made hemp cultivation again lawful. Federally recognized Native American tribes could not cultivate under state regulation, because the states have limited jurisdiction on their reservations. But the US Agriculture Department dragged its heels in issuing federal regs that could apply on these lands. Caught between two sovereigns, many farmers in Indian country are asserting their right to cultivate hemp under the un-extinguished sovereignty of their own Native nations.

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.

Hemp and hemp-derived CBD were officially legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill, but the US Department of Agriculture has failed to bring its regulations into conformity with the new federal law—until now. Interim regs have just been issued by the USDA, with a 60-day public comment period to follow—meaning a final rule will likely be in place in time for next year's planting season.

There has been significant progress toward cannabis legalization in the United States and globally over the past years, but pockets persist of the most repressive and reactionary prohibition. What are the prospects for expanding cannabis freedom in the coming year?

A Native American tribe in South Dakota is taking the US Department of Agriculture to court to demand its right to cultivate low-THC cannabis—and to force the agency to live up to its regulatory responsibilities under the 2018 Farm Bill.

Building on longstanding policy that bars federal cannabis enforcement in medical marijuana states, the House of Representatives passed a measure that would instate a similar hands-off approach to enforcement in states that have generally legalized. Other measures would slash funding for the DEA, and call upon the FDA to promulgate regs for CBD.

A new study finds that cannabis legalization is not linked to an increase in traffic deaths. This may come as little surprise to those with experience in cannabis' actual effects, but challenges an entrenched assumption of prohibitionist propaganda.

With Oklahoma’s passage of a medical marijuana law, advocacy organizations say there is now only one state in the entire union without some sort of legal provision for medicinal use of either herbal cannabis or cannabinoid extracts: Idaho. And with a governor's race this year, there may be hope even there. One by one, even the most culturally conservative states are succumbing to the demands of patients and the findings of science to pass laws to allow use of (at least) extracts containing cannabinoids, or (at most) actual herbaceous marijuana, for either medical or "recreational" purposes.