Global Ganja Report

The networking group CannaGather held its fifth confab at lower Manhattan's Galvanize venue Sept. 28, bringing together some 200 entrepreneurs, investors, press and activists from throughout the New York metropolitan area. Inspired by the New York tech industry meet-ups of the dot-com boom in the late '90s, CannaGather hopes to similarly connect people in a burgeoning industry and help spur its growth.

The post-Soviet republics of Central Asia have emerged as a key smuggling route for hashish making its way from Afghanistan to European markets—as well as developing their own local hashish (and opium) production. As ever, the illegal economy is breeding destructive gunplay throughout the region. But in these authoritarian nations, proosals for legalization have been marginalized—until now.

A district court in Oslo on Sept. 18 sentenced Norway's former top police official for organized crime to 21 years in prison for conspiracy to smuggle hashish. Eirik Jensen was arrested in 2014 after being secretly filmed in a meeting with Gjermund Cappelen, said to be Norway's biggest hashish importer. The two men were tired together.

Despite Saudi Arabia's penchant for beheading hashish smugglers, the stuff just keeps coming in. The latest big haul was reported in early September, when a Border Guard naval patrol seized 258 kilograms of hash at Jeddah, the country's principal Red Sea port. A vessel with three Yemeni nationals on board was also seized in the maritime operation—in what is now a familiar story. The flow of hashish entering from Saudi Arabia's war-torn southern neighbor has been increasing as the conflict in Yemen has escalated—whether it is coming up the Red Sea coast or over the rugged land border of harsh desert and mountains.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Aug. 28 overturning Barack Obama's 2015 directive that barred local police agencies from receiving most forms of military equipment from the federal government. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the order  in a speech to the Fraternal Order of Police, which led the campaign to reverse the Obama policy.

It's an ominous sign that even as California is on a countdown to cannabis legalization, to take effect in January, big pot raids continue in the Emerald Triangle. The most recent to make local news came on Aug. 22, when the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office Drug Enforcement Unit launched a three-day operation in the Conklin Creek area of Petrolia.

Morocco has long been the world's leading cannabis producer, but the conservative monarchy has managed to keep any talk of legalization out of political discourse—until last year, when the country's biggest opposition party submitted a bill in parliament to at least allow cultivation for medicinal and industrial purposes. Now that effort has been dealt a setback, with the unexpected resignation of Ilyas El-Omari as head of the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM).

After last weekend's horrorshow in Charlottesville, it's a relief that the white supremacist hate-fest planned for Boston on Aug. 19 (sickeningly billed as a "Free Speech" rally) was a total bust. Just some 40-odd "alt-right" protesters gathered on the historic Boston Common, dwarfed by about 40,000 counter-protesters, who chanted "wrong side of history" and "shame, shame." Eventually, police escorted the small group of haters with their Nazi regalia away to safety, and that was that.