Global Ganja Report

It's pretty surreal that even as a legal cannabis industry emerges on a global scale, there are still countries that impose outrageously draconian sentences for the herb—up to and including the death penalty.

The egregious case of a man sentenced to death for smuggling two pounds of cannabis into the Southeast Asian city-state of Singapore has focused global attention on the disturbing reality.

Despite Saudi Arabia's penchant for beheading hashish smugglers, the stuff just keeps coming in. The latest big haul was reported in early September, when a Border Guard naval patrol seized 258 kilograms of hash at Jeddah, the country's principal Red Sea port. A vessel with three Yemeni nationals on board was also seized in the maritime operation—in what is now a familiar story. The flow of hashish entering from Saudi Arabia's war-torn southern neighbor has been increasing as the conflict in Yemen has escalated—whether it is coming up the Red Sea coast or over the rugged land border of harsh desert and mountains.

A US citizen is in court in the Persian Guld emirate of Dubai for possession of gummy-bear sweets laced with hashish, the United Arab Emirate's The National newspaper reported Dec. 20. Prosecutors told the Dubai Criminal Court that the defendant, identified only as "JD," had brought the cannabis candy in from the US. Working as a manager in the Emirates, JD was busted in July at a cafe by narcotics officers acting on a tip. He was apparently intimidated into accompanying the officers to his residence, where he spilled the beans±or the bears. "He opened his fridge and picked up a plastic bag full of gummy bears," testified a police major. Nonetheless, in his court appearance this week, JD pleaded ignorance. "I used it but I didn't know what it was at the time because it was inside the sweets," JD told the judges.  

You think those international forces patroling the coast of Somalia are supposed to be protecting the sea lanes from pirates, right? Well, that's not all they're doing. In the latest operation completed on Oct. 6, an Australian frigate, the HMAS Toowoomba, backed up by a New Zealand search plane trailed a dhow—a type of sailboat traditionally used by Arab merchants— from the Arabian Sea to the Horn of Africa. After four days, the Australian crew was able to board the dhow, and a search turned up 5.59 metric tons of hashish. The operation was conducted under the command of Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150), officially established to fight piracy. CTF-150 is part of the Combined Maritime Forces, which are also policing the waters of the Persian Gulf—ostensibly against terrorist infiltration, but far more often against hashish smuggling. The recent haul was its first successful counter-narcotics operation since Pakistan's navy took command of CTF-150 in August. Task Force head Commodore Sajid Mahmood said he was "incredibly proud" of the sailors and airmen involved in the bust. "CTF-150 has a long history of disrupting narcotics trafficking in the region," he enthused. "Keep up the good work!" (APNZ, Oct. 6)

Amnesty International's latest global report on the death penalty, "Death Sentences and Executions: 2013," finds that a number of nations in the Middle East have fueled a spike in global figures with a spree of executions. Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia alone accounted for almost 80% of all reported executions carried out worldwide in 2013—excluding China, where official figures are secret. The upsurge in executions in Iran and Iraq accounts for a global jump of nearly 15% from 2012. Across the Middle East and North Africa, at least 638 people were executed in 2013—mostly by beheadings, hangings or firing squad. In Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, capital punishment was imposed for drug offenses. In Saudi Arabia, one man was executed for "adultery." Vaguely worded offenses, such as moharebeh ("enmity against God"), were used in Iran to repress the political activities of ethnic minorities such as the Kurds.

The growing paranoia about Iranian hashish flooding the puritanical Persian Gulf states will doubtless be jacked up by the latest busts—three Iranian men arrested off Dubai by security forces of the United Arab Emirates, accused of smuggling 223 kilograms of hash and nearly 20,000 Tramadol pills in the diesel tanks of their dhow. The Sept. 30 bust comes as a 35-year-old Bangladeshi worker was charged with possessing 10,350 Tramadol pills for distribution in the UAE. Days earlier, agents of Kuwait's Drug Control Department nabbed a Kuwaiti citizen and an accused accomplice of unspecified Arab origin in possession of 8 kilograms of hashish and 5,000  Tramadol  tablets. (Gulf News, Sept. 30; Arab Times, Sept. 28)

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates reported their biggest drug bust in 20 years, with Sharjah Province Anti-Narcotics Police seizing 2.5 tons of hashish. The sting operation dubbed "Eastern Wind" was carried out in cooperation with the coast guard. Twelve Iranians and two Pakistani were reported arrested. (Gulf News, Jan. 28)