Global Ganja Report

A parliamentary initiative has been launched to legalize medical marijuana cultivation in fabled hashish producer Lebanon, amid growing proposals for a general legalization of cannabis. But many growers in the Bekaa Valley are watching warily, fearing they will be left behind as foreign capital flows in for a legal industry.

After three years of mounting discontent from patients and providers alike, Florida's medical marijuana chief Christian Bax is stepping down. He leaves office as state health authorities prepare for a tsunami of applications for a few highly coveted marijuana licenses.

New York and New Jersey are notorious rivals. Especially New York City denizens see themselves as metropolitan sophisticates and view their neighbors across the Hudson River as rubes. But the two states are now racing to see which will legalize cannabis first. There are formidable obstacles in both states, but New Jersey is clearly ahead.

Suddenly, New York state's political establishment is looking seriously at cannabis legalization, driven by growing concerns over long-entrenched racial discrimination in enforcement of the marijuana laws. But there is a growing realization that legalization alone will not be enough to correct this legacy unless it is implemented in way explicitly designed to do so.

New York City's Cannabis Parade, flagship entry in the Global Marijuana March movement and a counterculture event dating back to the early 1970s, this year actually drew mainstream politicians and candidates. Nearly all struck themes of racial justice, emphasizing that a push for legalization in the Empire State must also address the social iniquities of cannabis prohibition and the "war on drugs."

The city of Seattle has filed a motion to vacate hundreds of marijuana convictions going back more than 20 years. As these convictions disproportionately affected people of color, this is being hailed as an important step toward "cannabis equity"—implementing legalization in a way that addresses the social injustices associated with prohibition.

With a bombshell homespun video statement, New York's gadfly celebrity gubernatorial hopeful Cynthia Nixon has—for the moment, at least—placed the cannabis legalization question front and center in the race. Incumbent Andrew Cuomo, feeling the pressure from Nixon's challenge, is already starting to waver from his once intransigent stance against legalization.

District of Columbia activists actually passed out joints to city lawmakers in their effort to press them on a law to permit cannabis sales in the nation's capital. They've also tried to win this through ballot initiative, building on 2014's Initiative 71 that legalized possession of herb in DC. But councilmembers say their hands are tied by a Congressional stricture on any further lifting of the legal pressure on cannabis.