Global Ganja Report

Hemp’s Curious Cultural Trajectory

Now that hemp has finally arrived at its long-sought status as a legal crop and commodity, there is a sense of inevitability to its deviation from the utopian vision that animated the advocates who fought for it a generation ago.

A tension that has always existed between two currents in the subculture of hemp advocacy is increasingly weighted toward the more mundane—activists versus entrepreneurs, idealism versus pragmatism, agrarianism versus agribusiness. And finally the original paradigm of a crop with multitudinous uses as “food, fuel and fiber,” holding the potential to solve humanity’s ecological crisis, versus the hegemony of CBD.

Joe Biden's choice of running mate is Kamala Harris, who will bring a more progressive position on cannabis to the ticket. But if Harris today embraces legalization, she too has capitulated to the drug war establishment in the past—a reality her critics have been quick to exploit. A review of her record reveals an overall evolution toward a more enlightened stance.

Louisiana's medical marijuana program has been stalled for years, and was strictly limited to begin with. Now, just as cannabis products are finally becoming available, a wave of progressive legislation in the Pelican State includes measures that could expand the program's scope.

Nancy Pelosi roused the ire of Mitch McConnell and anti-pot lobbyists when she defended inclusion of a measure to protect cannabis businesses in the House pandemic recovery bill. Does the science actually point to a therapeutic role for cannabis in treatment of COVID-19?

Equity programs for the legal cannabis industry in California are supposed to address the racial and social iniquities that were associated with cannabis prohibition. But finding the right implementation model has proved tricky. And as a recent controversy in Los Angeles indicates, the failure of such programs can have impacts that go beyond who is getting licenses for dispensaries.

A new amendment to the Defense Department budget could allow service members to use CBD products—a direct response to a move by Pentagon brass to explicitly restrict all cannabis derivatives.

Amid national outrage over racial injustice, a Black disabled vet was sentenced to five years for cannabis that he uses medicinally in Alabama. A medical marijuana bill in the state seemed likely to pass this year, but was aborted when the legislature was shut down by the COVID-19 crisis. Alabama continues to have some of the harshest cannabis laws in the country.

As New Jersey awaits a November ballot initiative on legalization, the state's governor invoked cannabis as a potential key to post-pandemic economic recovery, as well as an imperative for racial justice. But even if the vote passes, deadlock in the statehouse could still be an obstacle to implementation.