Global Ganja Report

Lebanon, long the Middle East's heartland of hashish, has legalized cannabis cultivation for the medical market—but before the law has even taken effect, rumblings of cynicism are heard from the country's traditional growers. The outlaw growers in the Bekaa Valley, with its centuries-long tradition of hash production, will likely remain illicit and face continued militarized enforcement—while corporate producers with state-of-the-art greenhouses on the urbanized coast dominate the industry. And the hashish market has been hard hit by the country's deep economic crisis, leaving the Bekaa cannabis farmers struggling.

A British pretty-boy model getting popped for pot and facing a lengthy term in notoriously harsh prisons has again focused international attention on Indonesia's anti-drug police state. But countless others suffer in the shadows—including some 150 on death row for drug charges. And recent progress in official recognition of (at least) the medicinal properties of cannabis has been rolled back.

Israel is a world leader in medical marijuana and has adopted an experimental decriminalization policy. But activists are pushing to make it the world's third country to outright legalize—and are using some very audacious tactics.

Gains are reported from Massachusetts in organized labor's push to unionize the cannabis industry. But significant obstacles remain—from management roadblocking, to the ambiguous status under national labor law of an industry dealing in a federally illegal substance.

The son of late reggae legend Peter Tosh, himself a successful musical artist who recorded under the stage name Tosh 1, has died at the age of 40. He'd never fully recovered from a brutal 2017 beating in a New Jersey jail, where he was serving time on a cannabis charge.

Thailand’s medical marijuana program, after a slow and cautious start, is about to embark on commercial cultivation following cabinet approval of a proposal from the Health Ministry. Unique among such programs worldwide, the Thai framework is crafted to balance the interests of the pharmaceutical industry and the country's traditional herbal medicine practitioners.

Louisiana's medical marijuana program has been stalled for years, and was strictly limited to begin with. Now, just as cannabis products are finally becoming available, a wave of progressive legislation in the Pelican State includes measures that could expand the program's scope.

A new amendment to the Defense Department budget could allow service members to use CBD products—a direct response to a move by Pentagon brass to explicitly restrict all cannabis derivatives.