Global Ganja Report

In the ultimate imprimatur of mainstream acceptance, the 10th annual Cannabis World Congress & Business Expo was held June 5-6 in Manhattan’s Javits Convention Center, the Big Apple’s premier venue for trade shows and industry confabs. And the event had the open participation of New York city and state government agencies, as well as capitalist enterprises from around the country and the planet.

Small producers have long been wary of the cannabis industry coming under domination by multi-state operators with the worst practices of corporate America. But the revelations of Russian oligarch money in the coffers of leading MSO Curaleaf appear to vindicate even the most cynical observers. These follow a slew of controversies concerning product safety and labor rights at the company.

Small is Beautiful for the Berkshires’ Badass Bud

Nestled in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts is the town of West Stockbridge, where Wiseacre Farm boasts that it is the smallest artisanal cannabis producer in the commonwealth.

Irradiated cannabis? Yes, it’s a reality. While it may sound scary, industry tells us not to worry. Consumer advocacy groups, however, are raising concerns.

Nearly 20 states have now approved initiatives or legislation to legalize cannabis, and demands are growing to wipe out past convictions for personal possession. Authorities in some of these states have started to respond—but things are not moving fast enough for advocates of a socially just model of legalization.

Even as the edifice of cannabis prohibition crumbles state by state, the federal illegality of the plant and its psychoactive compound THC continues to drive a quest for loopholes in the relevant statutes.


The latest such legal artifice concerns Delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol — a less potent cannabinoid than the more common and notorious Delta-9 THC. Is there truth to the claim that hemp-derived Delta-8 THC was inadvertently legalized by the 2018 Farm Bill?

Gains are reported from Massachusetts in organized labor's push to unionize the cannabis industry. But significant obstacles remain—from management roadblocking, to the ambiguous status under national labor law of an industry dealing in a federally illegal substance.

The son of late reggae legend Peter Tosh, himself a successful musical artist who recorded under the stage name Tosh 1, has died at the age of 40. He'd never fully recovered from a brutal 2017 beating in a New Jersey jail, where he was serving time on a cannabis charge.