Global Ganja Report

Among several cannabis-related bills signed into law by California's Gov. Jerry Brown was one creating an "equity" program for the state's legalized industry, aimed at justice and inclusion for those communities hardest hit by marijuana prohibition. Another measure will erase past convictions for possession of cannabis in quantities that are now legal.

Compassionate care—providing medical marijuana to the ill—was what first opened legal space for cannabis in California a generation ago. But the state's Adult Use of Marijuana Act only regulates commercial businesses—leaving caregivers in legal limbo.

A figure from the Bay Area cannabis industry was embroiled in America's fast-escalating culture wars when she threatened to call the police on a young Black girl selling water on a San Francisco street. In the outcry, she has stepped down from her own company—and helped draw a line over what behavior is considered acceptable in the cannabis community.

Something of a corporate scramble is underway to secure patents for the various curative properties of CBD, and associated products and procedures. Pharmaceutical firms see a windfall, but some activists raise concerns about the creeping privatization of a cannabinoid that should belong to the genetic and intellectual commons of the human race. How realistic are fears about the imminent arrival of "corporate cannabis"?

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.

Longtime California cannabis crusader Dennis Peron, who probably did more than any other one human being to bring about legalization of medical marijuana, died Jan. 27 at a San Francisco veteran's hospital, following a battle with lung cancer. He was 72. Peron was the prime mover behind San Francisco's Proposition P, the 1991 voter initiative that made the city the first government entity in the US to officially embrace medical marijuana, deprioritizing police enforcement for medicinal users.

California state authorities have issued new regulations governing the legal cannabis market that is to be officially instated on Jan. 1. Jointly drawn up by the Department of Health, Department of Food & Agriculture and the new Bureau of Cannabis Control, the regs are meeting with some trepidation from the Golden State's traditional cannabis sector. Most controversially, many small growers were disappointed that the regs include no limit on the number of licenses a single grower can hold or the total acreage one can farm.

The first decisive step toward the liberalized atmosphere for cannabis across much of the country was quite arguably San Francisco's Proposition P of 1991—the popular initiative that protected medical marijuana use in the city. So it's heartwarming that the City by the Bay has just established an Office of Cannabis to oversee legal sales.