Global Ganja Report

Noting that prohibition takes a disproportionate toll on African American youth, leaders of the NAACP's California chapter announced June 28 that they are backing passage of the marijuana legalization initiative on the November ballot. Alice Huffman, president of the NAACP's state conference, said the war on drugs is a failure.

A New Jersey lawmaker who was instrumental in passage of a medical marijuana law back in January is now suggesting that the state's premier university become a national center for research into the plant and its beneficial properties.

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)

Peru is set to overtake Colombia as the world's top coca producer, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its World Drug Report 2010 released this week. The agency cited a 6.8% increase in areas of Peru under coca cultivation in 2009 compared with 2008—despite an overall 5% decrease from 167,000 hectares in 2008 to 158,000 hectares in 2009 across the Andean region generally.

New York's two leading candidates for governor have come clean about their pot-smoking pasts. Democrat Andrew Cuomo and Republican Rick Lazio both confirmed June 23 they smoked marijuana in their youth, but say they never used any other illegal drugs. Independent candidate Carl Paladino says he has never used any illegal drugs, including marijuana. (WVIB, Buffalo, June 23)

The first ever High Times Medical Cannabis Cup was held this week in San Francisco. For two days hundreds of guests shelled out $60 a head to pack the Terra Gallery on Harrison Street, where an "all-star" panel of High Times cultivation writers and California medical marijuana experts picked the best product from dispensaries around the Bay Area. 

California cannabis activist Ed Rosenthal has filed the first formal complaint in a notorious SWAT team raid of a home in Columbia, Mo., that has garnered more than a million hits on YouTube.

A new drug made from cannabis has been licensed in the UK. Sativex, a tincture of extracts from the plant, is sprayed under the tongue up to 12 times a day, as a treatment for the stiffness and spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis. The Home Office has rated it as having zero abuse potential. Britain is the first country to give the drug full regulatory approval, although Canada gave Sativex a limited license to treat neuropathic pain in 2005. It is made from plants grown at a secret location in southern England by GW Pharmaceuticals, whose shares have risen 60% in the last six months in anticipation of the new product.