Global Ganja Report

Global executions rose dramatically in 2024, reaching 1,518 recorded deaths across 15 countries—the highest figure since 2015—Amnesty International said April 8 as it released its annual report on the use of the death penalty. The 48-page report, "Death Sentences and Executions 2024," found that Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia were responsible for 91% of known executions, with Iran alone accounting for nearly two-thirds.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek on April 2 signed a law recriminalizing the possession of personal quantities of illicit drugs. The law overturns Measure 110, approved by voters with 58% support in 2020, which made personal-use possession of drugs such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine only punishable by a ticket and a maximum fine of $100.

Industrial-scale illicit cannabis grow operations are being raided by police in Southern Oregon. Licit-market prices are totally depressed in Oregon, yet the illicit market continues to be evidently lucrative. What explains this contradiction, and what can be done?

In a proverbial case of "good news, bad news," a national study finds that even as overall incarceration rates have dramatically dropped over the past decade, drug arrest rates have remained high—and racial disparities in arrests have persisted. The disparities have, nonetheless, decreased, as have overall cannabis arrests—with a big uptick in meth arrests taking up the slack.

There has been a flurry of vague but lurid reportage about a supposedly addicting and debilitating pseudo-cannabis that is going around in Sierra Leone and other West African countries. This may be akin to products such as K2 and Spice, widely marketed in the US and Europe—but if reports are to be believed, it is far more dangerous.

A Bollywood celebrity was arrested for supposedly using hashish and other drugs on a cruise ship off Mumbai—one of a slew of high-profile cases that have embarrassed India's entertainment industry and political establishment. Apart from providing fodder for the gossip columns, however, the affair raises serious concerns about civil rights in "the world's largest democracy."

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.

A British pretty-boy model getting popped for pot and facing a lengthy term in notoriously harsh prisons has again focused international attention on Indonesia's anti-drug police state. But countless others suffer in the shadows—including some 150 on death row for drug charges. And recent progress in official recognition of (at least) the medicinal properties of cannabis has been rolled back.