Global Ganja Report

Medical marijuana users who demand their right to smoke herbaceous cannabis were dealt a double whammy as Oklahoma health authorities and a Florida court each issued edicts upholding strictures on smokable forms. But is it really medical marijuana if it doesn't include the right to smoke the herbaceous form of the plant?

Emotional exchanges at City Council hearings in New York focused on the NYPD's "gang database," which critics say targets and stigmatizes even those who have long since cut ties to the city's "crews." The city has seen big militarized raids on housing projects as part of the crackdown on crews in recent years. But while heavy charges against suspected crew members made headlines at the time of the raids, little note was paid when some of those charges were downgraded to mere marijuana possession. Are claims of pot-dealing being used to place the city's Black and Latino youth on the database?

With US stock exchanges still almost entirely closed to cannabis businesses, the stateside industry is increasingly seeking access to the Canadian exchanges in order to secure investment. Taking over publicly traded Canadian firms through reverse mergers has emerged as the critical tactic in this endeavor.

Things are moving fast in the Empire State, with cannabis legalization proposals striding toward mainstream acceptance—spurred by a growing sense of injustice over the racial disparities in enforcement. In what could be a watershed moment, the state Democratic Party just adopted a resolution to embrace legalization. The party elite seem to be feeling the pressure from below in a gubernatorial election year.

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."

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.

Seniors are the fastest growing group of medicinal cannabis users in the country, and a growing number of nursing homes from coast to coast are tolerating use of tinctures and extracts to combat dementia, insomnia and related ailments. Patient testimony is now backed up by research, with scientists identifying the mechanism by which cannabinoids slow the deterioration of neurons in the brain. But federal strictures continue to pose an obstacle to investigation—leaving medicinal users in the cold under US law.