Global Ganja Report

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.

On the eve of 420, a National Cannabis Policy Summit will convene in the nation's capital, joining industry leaders, activists and elected officials to discuss how legalization could look in the United States—and how to get there.

Amid the various protesters that announced plans to gather in Washington DC as Trump held his military parade on Veterans' Day weekend, a group of military vets say they will be camping out at the national offices of the Veterans Administration—to demand access to medical marijuana, as well as protest budget cuts at the agency.

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.

Under federal regulations, Section 8 housing residents risk losing their homes if they use cannabis. But residents who are also medical marijuana patients have started to stand up and demand their rights. Now, their efforts have seen fruit in legislation on Capitol Hill.

District of Columbia activists actually passed out joints to city lawmakers in their effort to press them on a law to permit cannabis sales in the nation's capital. They've also tried to win this through ballot initiative, building on 2014's Initiative 71 that legalized possession of herb in DC. But councilmembers say their hands are tied by a Congressional stricture on any further lifting of the legal pressure on cannabis.

The group High NY, "New York's Cannabis Community," hosted an event on "How to Apply Your Skills in the Cannabis Industry" at a Lower Manhattan venue the evening of March 22, featuring speakers with background in the biz from California, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Unlike these three polities, New York state has not legalized. But organizers took heart that on that very same day as their meet-up, chronic pain was added to the qualifying conditions under the Empire State's burgeoning if still limited medical marijuana program.

Lighting up joints right on the National Mall in the middle of Donald Trump's inauguration speech struck me as the perfect way to usher in the new era. As High Times reported, the Inauguration Day smoke-in did indeed get away with it. But the real testament to cannabis' power to bring people together actually came a few hours earlier, when the DC Cannabis Coalition gathered in Dupont Circle, about a mile from the mall, for their mass joint give-away.