Global Ganja Report

Jonathan Braun, 27, and looking more like a "skinny slacker from Staten Island" than the leader of an international drug-trafficking ring, was denied bail at a Brooklyn hearing June 3, with federal magistrate Viktor Pohorelsky saying, "The government has posited substantial evidence of Mr. Braun's involvement in this conspiracy, which involves huge amounts of marijuana and huge amounts of money."

The Montana Caregivers Network is traveling the state in "cannabis caravans," setting up shop in local hotels, where patients can walk in, see a doctor and—if they qualify—get a medical marijuana recommendation for a $150 fee. "You're helping end suffering on this planet for human beings," said mobile clinic organizer Jason Christ.

California's new Cannabis Law Institute has become the first marijuana law education group to be certified by the State Bar as a "Minimum Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) Multiple Activity Provider" and is authorized to offer official California MCLE credit for legal education activities. Only a handful of spots are left in their first 75-person seminar, to be held June 5 at the Hilton Sonoma for $420 a head.

The Montana Board of Medical Examiners found that Whitefish physician Dr. Patricia Cole's past work with medical marijuana patients "amounts to unprofessional conduct" and ordered her to pay a $2,000 fine in a May 21 decision.

The man who would be Snohomish County's next prosecuting attorney wants to legalize cannabis for adults. Jim Kenny on June 1 endorsed Initiative 1068, which would legalize use, possession and cultivation across the state of Washington.

Peter Orlovsky, longtime partner of Allen Ginsberg and a renowned poet and counterculture figure in his own right, died May 30 in Vermont of lung cancer. He was 76.

The Los Angeles Times recalls that Orlovsky met Ginsberg in San Francisco in 1954, just before Ginsberg wrote his seminal poem, "Howl," which was the subject of a 1957 obscenity trial that became a landmark free-expression case. Ginsberg and Orlovsky later moved to Paris, where they stayed with Gregory Corso, William Burroughs and others in a boarding house that would become known as the Beat Hotel. In the early 1960s, Orlovsky and Ginsberg traveled in India together, where they both became devotees of meditation and eastern mysticism.

The Coast Guard discovered nearly 800 pounds of cannabis in a boat traveling from the Bahamas on May 30. The 20-foot US-flagged boat was stopped around midnight after authorities received reports of a suspicious vessel making its way west from Bimini. Inspectors found 47 bricks of cannabis with an estimated value of $725,000 on the boat. Two crew members were detained and turned over to Customs and Border Protection, along with the cannabis and the vessel. (ANH, May 31)

Kim Severson, writing in the New York Times May 18 under the headline "Marijuana Fuels a New Kitchen Culture," quotes author and professional foodie Anthony Bourdain to the effect that chefs in the Big Apple's classiest eateries are regularly toking. "Everybody smokes dope after work," says Bourdain. "People you would never imagine." Severson argues that cannabis-induced cravings are even starting to influence the city's culinary trends: