Global Ganja Report

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."

After a widely publicized series of raids from Florida to New York City, on Oct. 5 the US Attorney's Southern District Office in Manhattan "announced the unsealing of an Indictment charging ten individuals and a complaint charging 40 individuals with participating in a massive marijuana trafficking ring that transported ton-quantities of marijuana from Florida and California for distribution in the greater New York area from the early 1990's to 2010."

The blog FireDogLake reports that Facebook ads for its pro-legalization campaign Just Say Now, which included an image of a cannabis leaf, have been banned by the social networking site. Facebook decided to ban all images of the cannabis leaf after the ad had been viewed an estimated 38 million times. FireDogLake has launched an online petition against Facebook's censorious policy.

New York Gov. David Paterson on July 16 signed a bill prohibiting the retention of personal information on individuals detained by New York City police during a "stop and frisk" but ultimately not charged with a crime. The law was approved by the New York Assembly last month and will end the practice of police obtaining and keeping an electronic record of all individuals who are temporarily detained based on a police officer's reasonable suspicion.

California cannabis activist Ed Rosenthal has filed the first formal complaint in a notorious SWAT team raid of a home in Columbia, Mo., that has garnered more than a million hits on YouTube.