Global Ganja Report

From Orlando, Fla., comes the maddening case of Daniel Rushing—who was literally arrested, handcuffed and charged with methamphetamine possession over a tiny flake of donut glaze on the floor of his car. The Orlando Sentinel reports that Rushing was driving home after dropping off a neighbor at the hospital for a chemotherapy session—something he did every Friday—when he stopped at a 7-Eleven to give another friend a ride home. The 7-Eleven was being staked out for suspected drug activity, and Rushing was stopped by police for failing to come to a full stop on pulling out of the parking lot. Threatened with a ticket, he agreed to a search of his vehicle—confident that he had no illegal materials. But the officer found "a rock like substance on the floor board," claimed to test it positive as meth, and dragged Rushing off to jail.

In his increasingly draconian anti-drug crackdown, the new Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, actually sent National Police troops to arrest a local mayor—resulting in a shoot-out that left six of the mayor's bodyguards dead. On Aug. 1, Duterte ordered Mayor Rolando Espinosa of Albuera town on Leyte island to surrender within 24 hours—and added: "Otherwise, an order of 'shoot on sight' will be given if they resist and endanger the lives of arresting police officers." Espinosa surrendered to police the next day—but his son, wanted as a suspected drug-dealer, remained at large. The day after that, the gun-fight broke out between the body-guards and police who were on patrol near Espinosa's house. Police of course said the body-guards fired first. The affair began July 28, when five other of Espinosa's body-guards and staff were busted in a sting operation for a street sale of shabu (methamphetamine).

Is the alcohol industry spending money to get members of Congress to pay attention to the problem of "marijuana-impaired driving"? That's the case made on the cannabis industry website Marijuana.com, where a blogger seems to have assiduously searched the famous WikiLeaks dump of DNC e-mails for any reference to our favorite herb. What they found was in the May 24, 2016 edition of Huddle, a daily e-newsletter for Capitol Hill insiders produced by the Politico website. That issue included a paid advertisement from the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA), which read in part:

Indonesia carried out its first executions in over a year on July 29, sending four drug convicts to a firing squad at the special island prison of Nusa Kambangan. The executions of the four—two Nigerians, one Senegalese and one Indonesian—came despite diplomatic pressure and international condemnation. As many as 10 other people await execution in Indonesia—including foreign nationals, and almost entirely on drug-related charges. Campaigners are still trying to win clemency for Zulfiqar Ali, a Pakistani man who "confessed" to heroin possession after being brutally beaten by police, and Merri Utami, an Indonesian woman arrested with heroin in her bag at Jakarta's airport after being tricked into becoming a drug mule. Their executions are believed to be imminent.

In an utterly bizarre case reported in Oregon's Willamette Week on July 27, the federal government is taking the almost unheard-of move of prosecuting an individual for possession of a small amount of cannabis. Making it all the more perverse, this is happening in Oregon, which last year legalized recreational cannabis by popular vote. More perverse still, the taregted individual is a Native American youth—who may face one year in prison for possession of just about enought herb to roll a fat joint.

Northern California's traditional cannabis heartland of Humboldt County this summer gave an official go-ahead for two commercial medical marijuana farms, the Eureka Times-Standard reports. The two operations are Honeydew Farms, a seven-acre outdoor grow in the town of Honeydew, and a quarter-acre "mixed-light" farm run by Blessed Coast LLC in Carlotta. These are the first such enterprises in the county, "marking the beginning of a new era for the industry."

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte took office last month with a pledge to unleash a deadly crackdown on drug users and other miscreants—and he's sure delivered. In his first State of the Nation address July 25, he issued more such rhetoric. "Show no mercy to them because they are not showing any mercy to us anyway," Duterte declared to cheers from his supporters in congress. He called on police and security forces to "double your efforts, triple them if need be... We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier and the last pusher have surrendered or put behind bars or below the ground if they so wish." Clearly addressing his critics, he added that "human rights cannot be used a shield or an excuse to destroy the country."

Amid a growing sense of crisis here in the United States, comes the unwelcome news that the White House will reconsider its May 2015 ban on police forces getting armored vehicles and similar military gear from the Defense Department. The leaders of two police organizations boasted of this to Reuters on July 21.  The named sources are Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, and Bill Johnson, that of the National Association of Police Organizations. The ban was instated following a public outcry over use of the military-grade riot gear by police in Ferguson, Mo,, and other cities in protests against police brutality.