Global Ganja Report

Oops, he did it again. Acting Drug Enforcement Administration chief Chuck Rosenberg reiterated his oft-voiced opinion on May 25 that "marijuana is not medicine." The Washington Examiner reports that he told an audience at a clinic in Cleveland: "If it turns out that there is something in smoked marijuana that helps people, that's awesome. I will be the last person to stand in the way of that... But let's run it through the Food and Drug Administration process, and let's stick to the science on it."

Florida is rapidly shaping up as a test case in whether the term "medical marijuana" necessarily has to include actual herbaceous cannabis. On May 15, the state's  Health Department ordered Quincy-based Trulieve dispensary to stop selling a "whole flower" product—officially intended for use in vaporizers but which can of course also be smoked. Trulieve just last week began sales of product dubbed “Entourage,”—named for the so-called "entourage effect," the synergistic workings of the various compounds in the actual cannabis flower. product meant to be used in the Volcano vaporizer, last week, reports Orlando Weekly. The Health Department's cease-and-desist letter came after local media reports about the sales of Entourage.

Oregon voted to legalize cannabis way back in November 2014, but promises of state coffers filled with canna-dollars are apparently being held up by an arcane bureaucratic logjam. Newsweek just noted a May 5 report from Oregon's KWG News finding that the state has brought in close to $75 million in cannabis tax revenue since the start of 2016—yet not a penny has gone to actually closing Salem's yawning $1.6 billion budget deficit.

Following last-minute changes, the lower house of Florida's legislature on May 2 voted 105-9 to pass HB 1397, ostensibly following through on the voter mandate to establish a medical marijuana program in the Sunshine State. But those last-minute changes included both a limit on the number of license holders—and a ban on actually smoking herbaceous cannabis. House sponsor and Republican leader Ray Rodrigues blamed fears of interference from the Trump administration, telling the Tampa Bay Times: "We have to make it legal and available to Florida residents, but we have to do it in such a way that it complies to the guidance we’ve been given by the federal government."

Just three days before the deadline to avert a government shutdown, Donald Trump blinked April 25, backing off from the demand that his planned border wall receive funding (to the whopping tune of $11.4 billion) in the spending measure now before Congress. But just two days earlier, in an interview with the Associated Press, Trump again invoked the need to protect the country from drugs as mandating his wall—and making absurdly hubristic claims about its effectiveness to do so...

It is certainly a sign of the times that a partnership of major California media—led by Bay Area News Group, owner of the San Jose Mercury News—has launched a website entitled The Cannifornian, "Covering the Golden State of Cannabis." That means it's dedicated to reportage on the fast-growing cannabis sector in post-legalization California. An April 25 offering, "Venture capital investors betting big on cannabis," notes that financial consultancy firm New Frontier Data is predicting nationwide legal cannabis sales will balloon to more than $24 billion by 2025.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, speaking to the Justice Department's Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) on April 18, pledged that the Trump administration will have "zero tolerance for gang violence" from "transnational criminal organizations"—particularly singling out MS-13, the Central American narco-network that has its roots on the streets of Los Angeles.

Wisconsin became the latest state to pass a strictly limited semblance of a medical marijuana law on April 18 as the arch-conservative Gov. Scott Walker signed Senate Bill 10, allowing patients to receive cannabidiol (CBD) extract from a physician or pharmacy with a prescription. The law, already passed by both houses of the legislature, takes effect immediately. It passed the Senate with only one dissenting vote, pointing to widespread support for the measure in the Badger State.