Global Ganja Report

Just little over a week before legalization took effect in California on Jan. 1, state police stopped a truck hauling 1,875 pounds of cannabis in Mendocino County, seizing the goods and slapping the two occupants with misdemeanor possession charges. This despite the fact that they were hauling for their employer, Ukiah-based Old Kai Logistics, and had paperwork showing the firm is licensed by county authorities. It remains to be seen if prosecutors will pursue the case in light of legalization, and the affair has enflamed suspicions between growers and authorities at a critical moment.

Longtime California cannabis crusader Dennis Peron, who probably did more than any other one human being to bring about legalization of medical marijuana, died Jan. 27 at a San Francisco veteran's hospital, following a battle with lung cancer. He was 72. Peron was the prime mover behind San Francisco's Proposition P, the 1991 voter initiative that made the city the first government entity in the US to officially embrace medical marijuana, deprioritizing police enforcement for medicinal users.

Colombia, long notorious as a violence-torn drug war dystopia, is now set to become a global leader in legal production of cannabis for the medical market. Vancouver-based International Cannabis Corp, also known as ICC Labs, is the latest foreign company to win a production license in the South American country. ICC Labs says it intends to cultivate "non-psychoactive" cannabis plants containing the cannabinoid CBD to produce various medicinal products for domestic and international distribution.

A new study published in The Economic Journal vindicates the optimistic prognosis of cannabis activists that legalizing the herb would de-escalate drug war violence. The study notes a reduction in violence in US states along the Mexican border in recent years, and especially in the counties along the international line. The authors draw a connection to the reduced legal pressure on cannabis in the United States over this same period, thanks to legalization and medical marijuana laws.

You could smell this one coming. Last year, horrific reports emerged from the southern Russian republic of Chechnya that authorities were rounding up gays in detainment camps and subjecting them to torture —the first time this kind of thing has happened in Europe since Nazi Germany. Now the reign of terror is being extended to drug users and small-time dealers, who are facing grisly torture at the hands of Chechen security forces as part of the same ultra-puritanical campaign. Reports describe electric current being applied to suspects' fingertips to induce them to "confess." No one has survived such questioning without eventually admitting their crime, the victims were told.

A big push is on in New Zealand for a bill that would give police the power to conduct roadside saliva tests for methamphetamine, ecstasy (MDMA)—and cannabis. And the public face of the campaign to pass the legislation is Malcolm Barnett, who in 2005 lost his 18-year-old step-daughter to a road crash with a driver who was wasted on meth, or "P," as they call it in New Zealand.

Here's some news that should surprise nobody. International efforts to suppress the trade in a psychoactive plant are failing to do so, but are jacking up the social costs of its use—which might be quite negligible if the stuff weren't illegal. In this case we're talking about khat, the mildly stimulating leaf that is chewed socially in the Horn of Africa and its immigrant diaspora. It was sold openly at groceries and eateries in London's African communities until Britain finally banned the stuff in of 2014, following the example of the United States (of course). At that time, it became a Class C substance under the UK Misuse of Drugs Act. By way of comparison, cannabis is in the more restrictive Class B—although between 2004 and 2008 pot was placed in Class C, and there is an initiative to have it removed from the classification system altogether.