Global Ganja Report

Hundreds of cannabis possession charges have been dismissed in Texas in recent weeks because police don't have labs that can differentiate between marijuana and newly legal hemp. The governor, attorney general and politicians are up in arms about it. Other states are updating their test kits to distinguish between CBD and THC in confiscated samples.

With passage of the Farm Bill and removal of hemp-derived CBD from controlled substance status, big market growth is expected for the very chic and purportedly salubrious non-psychoactive cannabinoid. The law is a win for a nascent CBD industry that has been struggling to shake off the lingering stigma surrounding (psychoactive) cannabis. The effort to segment cannabidiol from "marijuana" is exemplified in the several states that now have "CBD-only" laws.

A federal appeals court has turned down a challenge by the cannabis industry to the DEA's official finding that CBD is a controlled substance. But questions about whether CBD should be treated as a controlled substance remain pending at the state level.

After Jeff Sessions issued a memo urging prosecutors to seek the death penalty for those "dealing in extremely large quantities of drugs," even mainstream media outlets began raising the alarm that this could actually be used against large-scale legal cannabis cultivators in places like California. Is this threat is at all realistic?

A new study published in The Economic Journal vindicates the optimistic prognosis of cannabis activists that legalizing the herb would de-escalate drug war violence. The study notes a reduction in violence in US states along the Mexican border in recent years, and especially in the counties along the international line. The authors draw a connection to the reduced legal pressure on cannabis in the United States over this same period, thanks to legalization and medical marijuana laws.

It has been a long, slow ride for patients hoping to get access to medical marijuana in the Lone Star state—and then just special strains of low-THC cannabis, and only for those suffering from "intractable epilepsy." Three dispensaries are hoping to get final approval from Texas authorities to start cultivating next month. Of course, it will be several more months before they can actually begin distributing—and then ambiguities in the law may mean further delays. Activists and lawmakers are pushing both to clear things up and expand the scope of the program.

That's what almost happened to Josue Romero, a 19-year-old art student in San Antonio who had received a work permit under Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program—which is now threatened by Trump. Picked up on a minor pot bust Feb. 21, Romero was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), held for two days—and told by ICE agents that he would be deported to Honduras. Instead, he was released, without explanation. "I can't describe how I feel. I just want to break down and cry," Romero told the San Antonio Express-News after his release.  "I was kind of devastated. Because I’ve never known a life outside of San Antonio."

Amid a shameful paucity of media coverage, inmates at facilities in several states have organized work stoppages following a call for a nationwide prison strike to begin on Sept. 9—the anniversary of the 1971 Attica prison uprising. Organizers say inmates in at least 29 prisons in 12 states have launched strikes, with an unprecedented more than 24,000 prisoners participating. "This is a call to end slavery," reads the official call for the strike, issued by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. "They cannot run these facilities without us." While there have been prison strikes before—two earlier this year, in Texas and Alabama—this marks the first one to be nationally coordinated. Prisoners are using social media and smuggled cell phones to organize the national strike.