Global Ganja Report

Mayor Peter Arth of Dunsmuir, Calif., has propsoed planintg a large medical marijuana garden in the small city's historic business district. Arth, himself a medicinal user, this week asked the city council for a permit that would allow him to lease three commercial lots he owns to a cannabis collective to build greenhouses. Arth says the prime location would help "bring medical cannabis out of the darkness of an underground market and into the legal light."

Unidentified assailants threw an explosive over the fence of the US consulate in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on April 11. The blast caused some damage but no injuries. Authorities are investigating the explosion and have temporarily closed the consulate, as well as another in nearby Piedras Negras.

A Thai man was released from an Indonesian prison this week after spending an extra three years behind bars due to a typographical error in his paperwork. Kamjai Khong Thavorn, 53, was to be released in 2007 after completing a 20-year term for heroin possession, but the typo wrongly recorded his sentence as starting in 1997 rather than 1987.

2009 saw both a significant advance and retreat for a humane drug policy in Washington's two closest Drug War allies in Latin America. First in August—in a move that made few stateside headlines, and registered not a peep of protest from the Obama administration—Mexico's conservative President Felipe Calderón signed into law a bill decriminalizing "personal quantities" of all drugs.

As of March 26 sources in the Mexican military had admitted that it was probably soldiers who killed two graduate students the early morning of March 20 in front of the prestigious Institute of Technology and Higher Education's Monterrey campus (ITESM) in the northern state of Nuevo León.

A wave of marijuana law reform is sweeping the US, with initiatives to legalize medicinal use in the forefront, and the traditionally staid East Coast starting to catch up with western states. A medical marijuana bill is gaining ground in New York's state legislature, with lawmakers touting the additional revenues it could bring from licensing fees for growers and dispensers. (WXXI, Rochester, March 23)

Wachovia Corp. on March 18 agreed to pay $160 million to settle federal charges that it failed to establish an adequate anti-money laundering program. The case stems from investigations into transactions with Mexican exchange houses—or casas de cambio (CDCs)—between 2004 and 2007.

The US Senate Judiciary Committee on March 11 unanimously approved a bill to reduce sentencing disparities for powder and crack cocaine offenses. The Fair Sentencing Act, introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), is intended to bridge the gap between crack and powder cocaine sentencing by amending the Controlled Substances Act and the Controlled Substances Import and Export Act.