Global Ganja Report

Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota resigned Aug. 25 in the midst of a diplomatic scandal concerning a Bolivian opposition figure who accused the Evo Morales government of narco-corruption. Bolivian senator Roger Pinto had been holed up in the Brazilian embassy in La Paz for more than a year after he was charged with corruption-related crimes. He claimed the charges agaist him were retaliation for blowing the whistle on a Bolivian cabinet minister's meetings with a Brazilian drug lord. Pinto on Aug. 25 turned up in Brasília, having secretly fled Bolivia in a Brazilian diplomatic car, protected by a detachment of Brazilian soldiers.  According to Brazilian media, President Dilma Rousseff's government did not know of the operation and considered it a "disaster." Pinto on Sept. 3 said that he would decline requests to testify before Brazil's congress on the affair. (EFE, Sept. 3; BBC News, Aug. 26; WSJ, Aug. 25)

North Korea's sanction-stricken regime has long been accused of involvement in narco-trafficking as a source of currency, but a new report claims methamphetamine producers are proliferating along with an internal private market. According to a report in the Spring edition of the US-based journal North Korean Review, stricter controls at the Chinese border have prompted North Korean meth producers to glut the domestic market for "ice" (known locally as bingdu). The report's co-author, Kim Seok Hyang of South Korea's Ewha Woman's University, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that interviews with defectors indicated that North Korea is in the grip of an "ice" plague. "Some informants are saying almost every adult in North Korea around the China-North Korea border are using methamphetamine," she said.

The Strategy Page reports that on Aug. 23 an anti-Iran demonstration was held in the provincial capital of western Afghanistan's Herat province. Local Afghans accused Iranian diplomats based at the local consulate of bribing officials, and operating as a "criminal gang." Somebody is certainly bribing Afghan police and border officials in the province bordering Iran; Iranian security forces have seized 214 tons of opium and heroin at the Afghan border in the last five months, and made hundreds of arrests. A western opium route linking Afghanistan to global markets through Iran appears to be opening, adding to the traditional southern route through the Khyber Pass to Pakistan and northern route through Central Asia to Russia.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole, the same who authored a notorious 2011 memo asserting that federal cannabis enforcement remains a "core priority" even in states that have passed medical marijuana laws, has just issued a new memorandum seeming to clarify Justice Department reaction to the legalization measures in Colorado and Washington state. While it is written in the usual dense bureaucratese that often hides as much as it reveals, on balance it appears to represent a retreat from the hardline posture the Obama administration has assumed regarding medicinal cannabis over the past two years. The text of the Aug. 29 memo is provided by our comrades at CelebStoner:

Authorities in Hong Kong are boasting that the city's long-reigning criminal gangs, the notorious Triads, are finally crushed following an operation coordinated with police forces in Macau and mainland China's Guangdong province, in which more than 14,000 were arrested and 2,500 properties raided—including discos, massage parlours and nightclubs. Police confiscated HK$39.3  million (US$5 million) worth of illicit goods, including drugs, contraband cigarettes, pornography and weapons. Leading figures in the powerful Sun Yee On and 14K triads are said to be among the detained. 

Security forces of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic on Aug. 19 announced the seizure of 300 kilograms  of cannabis in operations along the security wall built by the Moroccan military, which divides Morocco-occupied Western Sahara on the western side from the interior desert controlled by the  Sahrawi rebels. In a statement to the press, the Saharawi National Gendarmerie Directorate said their patrols "have arrested three groups [that] were smuggling drugs from Morocco to northern Mali via the Saharawi liberated territory." The statement said five four-wheel-drive vehicles had been seized as well. "These groups are now at the hand of Saharawi justice," added the statement.

Cannabis is a $1.65 billion industry in New York City, according to a report released Aug. 14 by comptroller and mayoral hopeful John Liu, with the potential to become a $1.7 billion industry if it were made legal in the Big Apple. The report is the first official estimate of the city's cannabis market, and the first study to consider the idea of legalization at the municipal level in the nation's biggest city.

US Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a speech Aug. 12 to the annual meeting of the American Bar Association in which he outlined a new sentencing and enforcement strategy. Holder said that the Department of Justice is "considering compassionate release for inmates facing extraordinary or compelling circumstances." Holder also spoke out against the indiscriminate use of mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent offenders. There are currently more than two dozen federal medical marijuana patients and providers who are serving sentences for violating federal marijuana laws, despite being in compliance with the laws of their respective states.