Global Ganja Report

As harvest season approaches in northern Mexico's remote and rugged Golden Triangle, army and police forces are carrying out aggressive cannabis eradication campaigns. Commanders of the Fifth Military Region—straddling the states of Jalisco and Zacatecas—report that over the month of September, 882  marijuana plants covering an area of 115 hectares were burned in their fields, along with 284 opium plants covering 19 hectares. Military forces in Durango state gave a figure of 23 metric tons of harvested cannabis desrtroyed, as well as 500 combined marijuana and opium plants.

A cannabis decriminalization law took effect in Switzerland Oct. 1. From the start of this month, possession of up to 10 grams is punishable only by a fine of 100 Swiss Francs (approximately $110) for those over the age of 18. The new law is an effort to unify what had been a patchwork of policies that varied by locality. The measure is expected to save money by cutting back on the 30,000 cannabis-related cases that make their way to the courts each year.

Mexican federal police on Oct. 4 announced the apprehension of a fugitive Gulf Cartel operative, Eduardo Francisco Villatoro Cano AKA "Guayo"—wanted in Guatemala for a bloody attack on police earlier this year. Guayo was captured in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, capital of southern Chiapas state, bordering Guatemala. Guatemalan authorities hold him responsible for a June armed attack on a National Civil Police post in Salcajá, Quetzaltenango, in which nine officers were killed.  He was arrested along with his cousin, Édgar Waldiny Herrera Villatoro AKA "El Gualas." Although both men are Guatemalan nationals, they were said to be serving as agents of Mexico's Gulf Cartel. They were turned over to authorities in Guatemala, where President Otto Perez Molina said the Gulf Cartel network in the country has now been dismantled.

The growing paranoia about Iranian hashish flooding the puritanical Persian Gulf states will doubtless be jacked up by the latest busts—three Iranian men arrested off Dubai by security forces of the United Arab Emirates, accused of smuggling 223 kilograms of hash and nearly 20,000 Tramadol pills in the diesel tanks of their dhow. The Sept. 30 bust comes as a 35-year-old Bangladeshi worker was charged with possessing 10,350 Tramadol pills for distribution in the UAE. Days earlier, agents of Kuwait's Drug Control Department nabbed a Kuwaiti citizen and an accused accomplice of unspecified Arab origin in possession of 8 kilograms of hashish and 5,000  Tramadol  tablets. (Gulf News, Sept. 30; Arab Times, Sept. 28)

A group of leading Mexican intellectuals, celebrities and political figures issued an open letter, published as a paid ad in national newspapers Sept. 25, calling for decriminalize cannabis as a means to reduce drug war violence. "Mexico has paid a high cost for applying the punitive policy of prohibition," the letter read. "We know well that neither decriminalization nor any other individual measure represents a panacea to end the violence, corruption and lawlessness in Mexico. But effective decriminalization of marijuana consumption by raising the dose permitted for personal use is a step in the right direction." (Mexico passed a limited decriminalization measure in 2009.) The letter also favorably noted Uruguay's recent move to legalize possession and cultivation of cannabis under state regulation.

Ten people were killed as two gunmen attacked a home in the Ciudad Juárez suburb of Loma Blanca Sept. 22, where young people had gathered to celebrate a baseball victory. A seven-year-old girl, her mother, three teenage boys and five adult men are among the dead. The Chihuahua state prosecutor's office is investigating whether the massacre might be related to the kidnapping of five men from Loma Blanca's baseball field two months ago.

Medical marijuana advocates Americans for Safe Access (ASA) will join the Brownie Mary Democratic Club of Riverside County to stage a peaceful counter-demonstration at 11 AM on Monday, Sept. 23, against the 2013 National Marijuana Policy & Strategy Conference being held in Rancho Cucamonga. The conference is sponsored by some of the same groups that have strenuously lobbied against statewide regulations in California, including the California Narcotic Officers' Association and the California Peace Officers' Association.

Three men allegedly linked to Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, accused of conspiring to distribute a thousand kilograms of cocaine in the US and Europe, face trial in a federal court in Concord, New Hampshire, after being extradited from Spain. According to network Univisión, the accused were apprehended in the Spanish port of Algeciras in August 2012. One defendant, Manuel Jesús Gutiérrez Guzmán, has been identified as a cousin of Joaquin Guzman AKA "El Chapo"—the Sinaloa Cartel's notorious fugitive kingpin. Another, Rafael Humberto Celaya Valenzuela, was a candidate for public office in San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, with Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). (Latino Post, Proceso, Proceso, Sept. 4)