Global Ganja Report

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.

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.

Pollution from outlaw cannabis grows deep in California's national forests is far worse than previously thought, and has turned thousands of acres into virtual toxic waste dumps. That's the sobering assessment of an Aug. 6 Reuters report on the mounting ecological impacts of outdoor cultivation in the Golden State, which accounts for upwards of 90% of illegal marijuana production nationwide.

The first decisive step toward the liberalized atmosphere for cannabis across much of the country was quite arguably San Francisco's Proposition P of 1991—the popular initiative that protected medical marijuana use in the city. So it's heartwarming that the City by the Bay has just established an Office of Cannabis to oversee legal sales. 

Spain's restive northeastern region of Catalonia and especially its freewheeling capital Barcelona have over the past years come to rival the Netherlands and and Amsterdam as a European cannabis hub. Smokers' clubs have proliferated, tolerated (and regulated) by the authroities. Now the regional government, the Generalitat de Catalunya, has passed a measure formally legalizing the clubs.

Cuba is opening up its economy to private busineses and foreign investors, hoping for an end to the US embargo, and attracting record numbers of internaitonal tourists. But the new open atmosphere is definitely not extending to cannabis. In announcing a big increase in interceptions of illegal drugs this year, the nation's drug czar just took an open swipe at other Latin American countries that are embracing legalization, decriminalization or medical marijuana.

Portending an unprecedented showdown with federal power, California's State Assembly on June 1 approved a bill that would bar state and local law police from cooperating with the DEA and other federal agencies in cannabis enforcement efforts, unless compelled to do so by a court order. "Prohibiting our state and local law enforcement agencies from expending resources to assist federal intrusion of California-compliant cannabis activity reinforces...the will of our state's voters who overwhelmingly supported Proposition 64,” Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles), lead author of the bill, told the Los Angeles Times when it was still pending.

Oregon voted to legalize cannabis way back in November 2014, but promises of state coffers filled with canna-dollars are apparently being held up by an arcane bureaucratic logjam. Newsweek just noted a May 5 report from Oregon's KWG News finding that the state has brought in close to $75 million in cannabis tax revenue since the start of 2016—yet not a penny has gone to actually closing Salem's yawning $1.6 billion budget deficit.