Global Ganja Report

A Polish opposition law-maker tried to smoke a joint in parliament Jan. 20 to kick off his legalization campaign—but outmaneuvered by the house speaker, he burned marijuana incense instead. Janusz Palikot, leader of the left-libertarian Palikot Party, announced in advance his plan to light up, giving speaker Ewa Kopac time to organize tighter security.  Wearing a cannabis leaf-shaped pin, Palikot instead lit up a stick of incense in front of a crowd of journalists. "We've burned marijuana," he said. "It's incense with a small legal amount of marijuana, which smells like marijuana, bought at a shop in Warsaw."

Numerous "friends" have posted to my Facebook page a Dec. 19 story from a website with the tellingly stupid name Just Paste It entitled "Sweden legalizes and regulates cannabis." There's even a quote from an apparently non-existent Swedish official, "Jonas Grönhög," who says "We don't want to make the same mistakes which the USA has done, we do not want to be prohibitionists because the war on drugs has been lost long ago." Alas, Sweden has done no such thing. Tip of the hat to the good folks at the Toke of the Town blog for calling out the hoax.

Copenhagen's city council voted on Nov. 17 to empower its social affairs committee to draw up a detailed plan to legalize cannabis. If the plan is approved by Denmark's new left-of-center parliament next year, the city could become the first to legalize the herb—rather than simply tolerate it, as police do in the Netherlands. Under the concept, approved by a vote of 39-9, the city would grant licenses to individual growers, and city-owned shops would then sell their crop to the public.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and four former mayors of the British Columbia city have issued a public call for the legalization of cannabis. Robertson Tweeted Nov. 25: "Good to see 4 Vancouver ex-mayors calling for end of cannabis prohibition. I agree, we need to be smart and tax/regulate." This references an open letter to Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper that Robertson co-wrote with predecessors Larry Campbell, Mike Harcourt, Sam Sullivan and Philip Owen. The Nov. 23 letter, online at Stop the Violence BC, states:

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos said that legalization of soft drugs such as cannabis would allow shifting focus to harder drugs and help to stop international violence and trafficking. In an interview with Metro News, Santos said: "The world needs to discuss new approaches... we are basically still thinking within the same framework as we have done for the last 40 years." 

Mexico's former President Vicente Fox again spoke out for drug legalization this month, telling a Washington DC meeting of the right-libertarian Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity that prohibition bears responsibility for the horrific toll in his country's cartel wars: "Fifty thousand kids from 15 to 25 years old have been killed in the last five years. Violence does not defeat violence." He asked rhetorically: "Do we really expect that the government will eradicate the drugs from the face of the earth?"

Trustees of the California Medical Association, representing more than 35,000 physicians statewide, on Oct. 14 adopted a position calling for legalization of cannabis at their annual meeting in Anaheim—becoming the first major medical association in the nation to do so. Dr. Donald Lyman, the Sacramento physician who wrote the group's new policy, attributed the move to growing frustration over California's medical marijuana law, which puts practitioners in the situation of having to decide whether to recommend a substance that is illegal under federal law.

A park in Mexico City sports a small book stall known as the Biblioteca Canábica, or the Cannabis Library—part of an attempt by civil society groups to disseminate reliable information about illegal drugs for parents, teachers and youth. It's also a small way of raising the volume on a debate that is growing ever louder in Mexico: whether to legalize drugs.  "We want a healthier relationship with drugs," said Carlos Zamudio, director of the Cannabis Library project. "[T]he relationship we have now has brought us problems with violence and health. A healthier relationship requires regulating drugs in a different way."