Global Ganja Report

With all eyes on November's vote on cannabis legalization in California, the state Senate narrowly voted this week to reclassify possession of less than an ounce an infraction with a penalty of $100—rather than its current status as a misdemeanor with the same fine. Since possession of a less than an ounce is not punishable by jail time, "That's an infraction, by definition," according to Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), the author of SB 1449. "All this bill does is call it what it is—an infraction. It doesn't change the penalties."

Police launched a major anti-cannabis operation in Quebec June 3, arresting 35 in raids on four "compassion centers" in Montreal and one in Quebec City. A police spokesman said no organized crime gangs were linked to the centers—but that doesn’t make it OK.

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.