Global Ganja Report

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek on April 2 signed a law recriminalizing the possession of personal quantities of illicit drugs. The law overturns Measure 110, approved by voters with 58% support in 2020, which made personal-use possession of drugs such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine only punishable by a ticket and a maximum fine of $100.

There has been significant progress toward cannabis legalization in the United States and globally over the past years, but pockets persist of the most repressive and reactionary prohibition. What are the prospects for expanding cannabis freedom in the coming year?

Two bills to legalize "recreational" cannabis have been introduced in Portugal—a country that already has a thriving medical marijuana industry, and a "depenalization" policy for personal possession that has been hailed as a success by reform advocates across the world.

As the UN General Assembly met in New York, President Trump issued a "Global Call" to renew the war on drugs—to the dismay of activists and dissenting nations. But the UN itself has a contradictory cannabis policy—with some agencies recognizing its efficacy as medicine and others backing the prohibitionist doctrine of the Single Convention treaty.

With Canada now joining Uruguay as the second country to legalize cannabis at the national level, industry eyes are scanning the world map for which could be the likely third. Latin America may provide the candidate, as even UN experts now urge the region's governments to consider legalization as a way out of the endemic narco-violence. But pressure for legal cannabis is fast mounting in several European countries as well. Legalization may soon be on the legislative agenda in Australia, while New Zealand has promised to put the questions before the voters. 

A British Columbia firm which is one of Canada's leading licensed producers of medical marijuana has entered a partnership with the national subsidiary of Sandoz, a global leader in the pharmaceutical industry. The deal is being hailed as a milestone that signals the arrival of cannabis in the corporate economy.

A United Nations study brings back the surprise finding that the world's biggest producer of legal cannabis is Great Britain. The answer to this seeming anomaly lies in one UK-based multinational corporation with industrial-scale grow operations for production of pharmaceuticals.

Spain made unwanted international headlines Oct. 7 when nearly four metric tons of cocaine worth an estimated $260 million was seized by Spanish customs officers in the Atlantic, headed for the Iberian peninsula. The haul was found on a tugboat between Portugal's Madeira and Azores islands, with 165 packages of cocaine each weighing 23 kilograms—for a total of 3.7 tons—concealed beneath the vessel's cooking area. The operation was jointly conducted with UK's National Crime Agency under the co-ordination of the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre-Narcotics (MAOC-N) in Lisbon. The crew, from Turkey and Azerbaijan, were arrested.