Global Ganja Report

The woman behind the South American nation's new medical marijuana law may yet face prison time. Her crime? Providing the only medicine that worked for her ailing son.

In the working-class Lima district of Pueblo Libre, I make my way to an apartment complex and up to the flat of Ana Álvarez—the unlikely woman almost singly responsible for Peru’s groundbreaking new medical marijuana law.

In a bedroom, 18-year-old Anthony watches a noisy Spiderman movie, occasionally interrupting through the open door as I chat with his mom in the living room. Anthony suffers from tuberous sclerosis, a severe form of epilepsy, and was the voiceless central figure behind the events that led to a major reform of Peru’s drug laws in 2017.

Lesotho is a land-locked mountain kingdom in Africa that few in the outside world have heard of, but it punches above its weight where cannabis production is concerned. "Dagga" has long been a pillar of its economy. Now it is attracting international investment to grow cannabis for the global medical market. With cannabis just decriminalized in South Africa—which borders Lesotho on all sides, and is closely integrated with the kingdom—this is a promising sign for the entire region.

With Colombia's new conservative president threatening to roll back the country's ground-breaking decriminalization policy, a group of young activists in Bogotá held a public cannabis smoke-in to demand their right to the "personal dose." But, in what seems like a foreboding sign, it was quickly broken up by the feared National Police riot squad.

 
Since the right-wing Iván Duque was sworn in as Colombia's president last month, many have expressed fears that he will reverse the country's recent progress toward a more tolerant drug policy and de-escalation of its long crisis of nightmarish narco-violence. 

With the North American Free Trade Agreement under renegotiation, Mexico's former president and born-again cannabis advocate Vicente Fox is calling for the new treaty to include provisions for legal cross-border commerce in cannabis. But of course the federal governments of both the US and Mexico prohibit cannabis—despite growing demands for legalization both sides of the border.

Israel's Knesset overwhelmingly passed a cannabis decriminalization measure—sponsored by the ruling conservative government. This fruit of a long campaign by activists is, however, tentative. The law is set to expire in three years, pending a review of the policy's impacts.

A protest in the Caucasus republic of Georgia to demand legalization of personal drugs use, with an emphasis on cannabis, points to changing times in the former USSR. The youth group behind the protest was first formed to demand freedom for a popular artist who was sentenced to 14 years for possession of a small amount of herb. The country's top court actually struck down penalties for cannabis possession as a result of the case. But the activists are pressing their campaign—a sign of cultural thaw in a region with very harsh drug laws.

Zimbabwe, seemingly an unlikely candidate, has just become the second African nation to legalize medical marijuana. The only other African country to have done so is the tiny landlocked mountain kingdom of Lesotho—where cannabis has long been tolerated as an economic mainstay. Given that Zimbabwe is traditionally one of Africa's more closed societies, this is a hopeful sign—both that things are loosening up there after the recent fall of its long-ruling strongman, and for an eventual daylighting of the dagga economy throughout the continent.

Following a favorable court ruling earlier this year, cannabis advocates and growers are making a big push for a legal industry in South Africa. A first regional industry meeting was held Sept. 20 at Cato Ridge outside the port city of Durban, bringing together producers under the banner of the Cannabis Development Council of South Africa.