Global Ganja Report

The most enlightened cannabis connoisseurs—those who still have a link back to the values that defined the hippie culture—tend to be conscious consumers when it comes to food or computers or whatnot. They may buy organic tomatoes, boycott Taco Bell to support exploited farm workers in Florida, and petition Apple about the brutal conditions in their Chinese assembly plants. But do they pay as much attention to the source of their preferred smoking herb? 

Is there blood on your ganja?

The New York Times reported July 21 that the US has begun training an elite unit of counternarcotics police in Ghana, and planning similar units in Nigeria and Kenya—part of an effort to combat the Latin American cartels that are increasingly using Africa to traffic cocaine to Europe. The decision comes despite controversy over a similar program in Central America. "We see Africa as the new frontier in terms of counterterrorism and counternarcotics issues," said Jeffrey P. Breeden, chief of the DEA's Europe, Asia and Africa section. "It's a place that we need to get ahead of — we’re already behind the curve in some ways, and we need to catch up."

The latest coup d'etat in Guinea-Bissau is being linked by Western diplomats to the international drug trade. Soldiers took control of much of the capital Bissau on April 13 as the military announced that it had arrested interim President Raimundo Pereira, as well as Carlos Gomes Jr., a former prime minister and leading presidential candidate. Press accounts cite speculation that Gomes ran afoul of the military by promising to end a lucrative arrangement with drug traffickers.

President Barack Obama has included El Salvador and Belize on the list of 22 countries ranked as "Major Illicit Drug Transit or Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries for Fiscal Year 2012"—for the first time placing all seven Central American nations on the annual list that identifies countries that "significantly affect the United States" through their role in the drug trade.

Ghanians cheering their national team to victory in the World Cup match in South Africa may have been imbibing in more than just beer. Earlier this month, agents of Ghana's National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) discovered 70 acres of land under illegal cannabis cultivation at Omuaran, Ekiti state. The plantations were burned and seven farmworkers arrested. (The Daily Sun, Accra, June 3)