Global Ganja Report

Cuba is opening up its economy to private busineses and foreign investors, hoping for an end to the US embargo, and attracting record numbers of internaitonal tourists. But the new open atmosphere is definitely not extending to cannabis. In announcing a big increase in interceptions of illegal drugs this year, the nation's drug czar just took an open swipe at other Latin American countries that are embracing legalization, decriminalization or medical marijuana.

Three of the Balkan states to emerge from the ashes of Yugoslavia a generation ago are now among the first countries in the ex-communist world to move toward embrace of medical marijuana.

The First Argentine Congress on Cannabis and Health was held last week at the National University of La Plata (UNLP), bringing together academics, activists, cultivators and patients from across the Southern Cone country. The focus was on expanding the extremely limited medical marijuana law passed in Argentina earlier this year. At the opening ceremony, held in an auditorium within La Plata's provinicial legislature building, UNLP president Raúl Perdomo pledged to "work to make the regulations for the recently approved law include the national universities in cultivation and research."

June 30 marks one year since the ultra-hardline President Rodrigo Duterte took office in the Philippines, on a pledge to halt the "virulent social disease" of drug abuse. Officials boast that crime has dropped, thousands have been arrested on drug offenses, and a million users have turned themselves in for treatment programs instead of jail. The usual totalitarian rhetoric is employed to justify the price in human lives for this supposed progress—the bloodletting is necessary for the health of the nation. "There are thousands of people who are being killed, yes," Manila police chief Oscar Albayalde told Reuters for a one-year assesment of Duterte's crackdown. "But there are millions who live, see?"

The family of late reggae legend Peter Tosh announced June 22 that the superstar's son has been left in a coma following a beating in a New Jersey jail, where he was serving a six-month sentence on a marijuana possession charge.

Cannabis seizures are rapidly escalating in Hong Kong—whether due to greater quantities on the market or stepped-up enforcement, or both. The city's South China Morning Post reports June 19 on a haul of 35 kilos in 136 baggies ready for sale, uncovered in a vehicle during a police raid on a car park. Three were arrested. Police estimated the street value of the load at HK$10 million (about US$1.3 million). As recently as May 27, the SCMP reported a police raid on an industrial building in the city's Tai Po district that netted 110 kilos, worth HK$19 million. (Obviously, the math is not adding up here, raising questions about how the Hong Kong cops arrive at their estimates.)

Protests broke out in Minnesota's Twin Cities the night of June 16, after the acquittal of a police officer in the notorious slaying of Black motorist Philando Castile—a St. Paul school cafeteria worker who was 32 at the time of his death. As I write, the first arrests are taking place, as thousands of demonstrators attempt to shut down Interstate 94. Black Lives Matter protesters are again mobilizing in cities across the country.

Well, absolutely not, but you could be forgiven for thinking so, based on a cursory review of recent headlines.

Although it hasn't made much of a splash stateside, the big news in the South this week is the "marijuana scandal" surrounding a singer from the suggestively named K-pop boy-band Big Bang, who goes by the stage-name T.O.P.