Global Ganja Report

A coalition of cannabis advocates led by Americans for Safe Access and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) has proposed a 2012  California ballot initiative that would create a Board of Medical Marijuana Enforcement to oversee a statewide system for licensing, regulating and taxing the industry.

Numerous "friends" have posted to my Facebook page a Dec. 19 story from a website with the tellingly stupid name Just Paste It entitled "Sweden legalizes and regulates cannabis." There's even a quote from an apparently non-existent Swedish official, "Jonas Grönhög," who says "We don't want to make the same mistakes which the USA has done, we do not want to be prohibitionists because the war on drugs has been lost long ago." Alas, Sweden has done no such thing. Tip of the hat to the good folks at the Toke of the Town blog for calling out the hoax.

Even as the White House has censured Venezuelan officials for "narco-terrorist" ties, AP reported Dec. 15 that Venezuela handed a top Colombian drug trafficking suspect to US authorities. The US had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Maximiliano Bonilla Orozco AKA "Valenciano." InsightCrime informs us that "Valenciano" led the "Oficina de Envigado" criminal organization, seen as a successor to the Medellín Cartel. He was arrested last month in Maracay, west of Caracas.

The Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Fairfax officially closes this weekend in the face of federal threats to the dispensary's landlord. Additionally, the Marin Independent Journal reports Dec. 16 that one and possibly two more of Marin County's six dispensaries will be following suit. The Marin Wellness Center in Kentfield, also will cease operations by Jan. 1. Scot Candell, a San Rafael lawyer who represents the center, said its landlord had likewise received a threatening letter from federal prosecutors.

New legislation to ban non-Dutch residents from cannabis cafes in the southern Netherlands should be enforced no later than May 1, the Dutch justice ministry said Dec. 16. The law is set to be amended on Jan. 1, but there will be a grace period until May for coffee shops to set up a "new administrative system." The centre-right government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte plans to instate a "cannabis card," reserved for residents only and obligatory when visiting one of the country's 670 licensed coffee shops.

Cannabis use among teens is rising, despite declines in smoking and alcohol use, according to new findings of the Monitoring the Future survey, conducted by the University of Michigan for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The study reports that one in every 15 high school seniors said they used marijuana almost every day, the highest rate since 1981. And the Drug Czar is blaming the medical marijuana movement.

Late on the night of Dec. 13, the Long Beach City Council deadlocked on a motion to ban medical marijuana collectives in the city—a measure backed by both the city attorney and police department. The vote—split 4-to-4—was quickly followed by a second vote to delay another such vote until January. The vote followed some three hours of public comments—from medical marijuana patients and activists, lawyers and lobbyists, to local business owners and residents who claimed dispensaries were selling pot to "kids on bikes." One of the patients who spoke, Mark Lee—who has no legs and is wheelchair bound—urged the council not to ban the dispensaries because it would force him to obtain his medicine on the street.

On Dec. 12, "narco-banners" (narcomantas) with a four-paragraph communiqué were hung from pedestrian overpasses at 10 different spots around the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, signed with the name of Miguel Angel Treviño AKA "Z-40"—a fugitive leader of Los Zetas. Not hand-scrawled like most narcomantas, but professionally printed, the messages' first paragraph declared: "We do not govern this country, nor do we have a regime; we are not terrorists or guerrillas. We concentrate on our work and the last thing we want is to have problems with any government, neither Mexico nor much less with the US." The message went on to distance both Treviño and the Zetas from the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US, as well as an August attack in a Monterrey casino that killed more than 50.