Global Ganja Report

Those stigmatized as “drug dealers” can be good people too seems to be the overarching message in A Weed Grows in Boston by Valerie Vande Panne. The slim volume is a reproduction of a news story that originally ran in 2009 in the Boston Phoenix, which received both an AltWeekly award and a New England Newspaper & Press Association award. The author is former news editor for High Times, yet she is amusingly shocked by how ordinary is “Mary Jones” (the pseudonym given to the subject).

The attempted coup d'etat in the Democratic Republic of the Congo may or may not have been assisted by the CIA, but one of the Americans arrested in the affair is named as a "cannabis entrepreneur" —pointing to the possibility of legal cannabis playing the same destructive role in Central Africa that bananas have played in Central America. Yet while corporate power sees a lucrative new cash crop, lives (and especially Black lives) are still being ruined by cannabis prohibition in the United States. In Episode 228 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg argues that the old anarchist slogan "Neither your war nor your peace" can be updated as "Neither your prohibition nor your legalization!"

Israel is an emerging player in the international cannabis market, and the industry is embraced by pillars of the country’s political establishment. But every aspect of Israeli society as been impacted by the horrific events of last October 7, and the ensuing war. The cannabis sector has been no exception.

A series of documents from US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) officials published Jan. 12 make clear the department's recommendation that cannabis be reclassified to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act, allowing cannabis to be prescribed by medical professionals. Officials wrote that the basis for the recommendation is the "currently accepted medical use" of the plant.

The long-promised crackdown on unlicensed cannabis sales is finally arriving in New York City. The permanent cannabis carnival in Washington Square has been cleared by the police, and unlicensed stores are being raided. Yet, in a bitter irony, obstacles to the licensed retail sector, including legal challenges, continue to mount.

Dasheeda Dawson is “excited to be back home.”

After a long sojourn as a cannabis patient, advocate and entrepreneur in other states, the Brooklyn native is in her home town as New York City’s first cannabis czar—officially, director of Cannabis NYC, a new office created by Mayor Eric Adams.

In a paradox, New York authorities are finally unleashing the long-anticipated crackdown on the state’s legion and proliferating unlicensed cannabis retailers—while the licensing program continues to be slowed by obstacles, including legal challenges.

Rights for medicinal cannabis users in the workplace have not kept pace with the law in states that have embraced medical and even “recreational” use. Now a case in Vermont may push state and federal authorities alike to close the loopholes that allow workers to be dismissed—and denied unemployment insurance—for using state-legal medicine.