Global Ganja Report

An investigation by WNYC Radio into the New York Police Department's often illegal and racially discriminatory wave of arrests for misdemeanor cannabis possession finds that the police exploit citizens' ignorance of their rights. Out of the more than 50,000 arrests for possession in New York City last year, almost no one challenged the legality of the manner they were searched. And when the cases were thrown out—as many as 10 to 15 times every day in the Bronx alone—it was usually because police accidentally admitted they violated the rights of the person they searched.

Cornell Hood II got off with probation after three marijuana convictions in New Orleans. But after moving to St. Tammany Parish, a single such conviction landed the 35-year-old in prison for the rest of his life. Louisiana state Judge Raymond S. Childress punished Hood under Louisiana's repeat-offender law in his courtroom in Covington on May 5. A jury on Feb. 15 found Hood guilty of attempting to possess and distribute marijuana at his Slidell home.

Patients and their supporters rallied at the Justice Department in Washington DC on May 2 to protest increased federal interference in medical marijuana states. More than 200 supporters also rallied in Sacramento for medical marijuana patients Dr. Mollie Fry and her husband Dale Schafer as they surrendered to federal authorities to serve out five-year prison terms. Last week, the DEA raided several distribution centers in Spokane, Wash., as a state bill to license such facilities was vetoed the next day by Gov. Christine Gregoire. The Spokane actions are the latest in a string of more than 100 aggressive SWAT-style federal raids carried out since President Obama took office.

More than a dozen local and federal law enforcement agencies conducted aggressive criminal raids March 14 on 26 medical marijuana dispensaries and grow sites in 13 Montana cities, according to a press release issued by US Attorney Michael W. Cotter. Federal agencies involved in the raid included the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. No arrests were made, but the US Attorney has alleged probable cause for several federal criminal violations.

More people were arrested last year in New York City for cannabis possession than in the entire 19-year period from 1978 to 1996, according to an analysis released Feb. 11 by the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), drawing on figures from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. In 2010—the sixth year in a row that possession arrests increased—50,383 were busted for low-level cannabis offenses.

The California Supreme Court on Jan. 3 allowed police to search arrestees' cell phones without a warrant, saying defendants lose their privacy rights for any items they're carrying when taken into custody. Under US Supreme Court precedents, "this loss of privacy allows police not only to seize anything of importance they find on the arrestee's body...but also to open and examine what they find," the state court found in a 5-2 ruling.

Federal, state and local officials in a Northern California counter-terrorism drill  last week played out a scenario in which local cannabis growers set off bombs and took over the Shasta Dam, the nation’s second largest, to free an imprisoned comrade. A local news report said that in the mock-terror scenario, a cannabis growers' "red cell" set off bus and car bombs as distractions, took over the dam with three hostages, and then "threatened to flood the Sacramento River by rolling open the drum gates atop the dam."

Medical marijuana patient advocates and other stakeholders staged a protest Oct. 14 as criminal proceedings began at the Terraine Courthouse in San Jose, Calif. The protest came in response to aggressive enforcement actions over the past two weeks by several police departments and the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. The sweep, which resulted in the arrest of nearly two dozen medical marijuana patients and providers in Santa Clara County on Oct. 1 and 7, was dubbed Operation "Up in Smoke."