Global Ganja Report

This week, more than 12,000 people—85% of them Black—now serving time for crack cocaine offenses will have their sentences reviewed by a federal judge under terms of the Fair Sentencing Act, passed in August of last year. The reform bill reduced the 100-to-1 disparity between minimum sentences for crack and powder cocaine to 18-to-1. On Nov. 1, those already serving time became eligible for a hearing to consider reducing their sentences under the new changes.

Nine Congress members on Oct. 31 issued an open letter to President Obama urging him to put a halt to new aggressive Justice Department tactics aimed at dismantling California's medical marijuana industry. "It's unconscionable...to endanger the lives of patients," the reps state in the strongly worded letter, which calls for rescheduling cannabis. It especially urges support for HR 1983, the States' Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act, which was introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) earlier this year.

State, local and federal law enforcement in Arizona announced Oct. 31 that they have dismantled a smuggling ring allegedly operated by the Sinaloa Cartel, which is believed to have trafficked some $2 billion of drugs from Mexico through the state over the past five years. "We in Arizona continue to stand and fight the Mexican drug cartels, who think they own the place," Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said in a statement about the investigation, dubbed Operation Pipeline Express. A total of 76 individuals are being held in connection to the ring, from organizational bosses to stash-house guards to those who transported the drugs in backpacks and in vehicles. Weapons and large bundles of compacted cannabis were seized in the raids.

Richard Lee, central figure in downtown Oakland's cannabis-friendly Oaksterdam enclave, does not appear intimidated by the federal government’s crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries. Lee closed his dispensary, Coffeeshop Blue Sky, this week after US Attorney for California's Northern District Melinda Haag sent a letter to his landlord threatening criminal prosecution. But he promptly reopened it three doors down, with giant posters of cannabis buds in the windows. An employee at the door hands out fliers reading: "Thank you for your support. Together we will survive the attack. Long Live Oaksterdam." Lee told the New York Times he is not afraid of being a target. "If they do decide to prosecute me criminally," he said, "my defense is that juries cannot be punished for their verdicts."

Mexico's former President Vicente Fox again spoke out for drug legalization this month, telling a Washington DC meeting of the right-libertarian Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity that prohibition bears responsibility for the horrific toll in his country's cartel wars: "Fifty thousand kids from 15 to 25 years old have been killed in the last five years. Violence does not defeat violence." He asked rhetorically: "Do we really expect that the government will eradicate the drugs from the face of the earth?"

Americans for Safe Access (ASA), the country's largest cannabis patients advocacy organization, filed suit in federal court Oct. 27 challenging the Obama administration's attempt to subvert local and state medical marijuana laws in California. ASA argues in its lawsuit that Obama's Department of Justice (DoJ) has "instituted a policy to dismantle the medical marijuana laws of the State of California and to coerce its municipalities to pass bans on medical marijuana dispensaries." The DoJ policy has involved aggressive SWAT-style raids, criminal prosecutions of medical marijuana patients and providers, and threats to local officials for merely implementing state law.

Eviction notices from local and federal authorities shut down eight cannabis dispensaries in Orange County's Lake Forest this week, after years of litigation over zoning and more than $600,000 in legal fees. The dispensaries, in suites on the second floor of a strip mall, included Lake Forest Patients Group, Pharmers' Choice, Cannabis Permanente, Evergreen Holistic, Cooperative, Florentina Organic, Independent Collective of Orange County and The Health Collective.

Workers at seven Fort Collins cannabis dispensaries officially affiliated Oct. 17 with Colorado's largest labor union in an effort to further legitimize and protect the medical marijuana industry. Union organizers said an "overwhelmingly" large majority of the Fort Collins workers voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), making Colorado the second state in the US, after California, where some cannabis industry workers have formally unionized.