Global Ganja Report

Amid continued federal intransigence on recognizing cannabis as legitimate medicine for military veterans, advocates take heart in legislation pending on Capitol Hill that would mandate that the VA study the question.

Military veterans continue to be denied much-needed treatment by the VA because of their cannabis use, even in states that have legalized. While there has been some progress on the question, vets are still being cut off—amid a combined national crisis of veteran suicides and opioid abuse.

Having funded their long insurgency with opium and hashish, the Taliban are poised to establish a “narco-state” in Afghanistan. The multi-billion dollar 20-year US effort to suppress cultivation of illicit crops in the county failed as dramatically as its war against the Taliban. Exports of Taliban-tainted smack and hash are already reaching Europe, and may reach US shores.

As political and legal space opens for cannabis in state after state, the idea of caps on the potency — whether of flower, extracts or edibles — is gaining currency. But voices in the cannabis industry view this as a phobic response rooted in the flawed assumptions of prohibition.

Voters in Arizona, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, Oregon and South Dakota passed statewide ballot measures favoring medical marijuana, adult-use cannabis legalization or hemp cultivation in the Nov. 3 elections.

Martin Luther King Jr never spoke about cannabis, but his life and works have much to say about the fight for legalization, and against the "New Jim Crow" of the war on drugs. 

The percentage of military veterans facing challenges from PTSD is staggering, but the Department of Veterans Affairs remains intransigent on allowing access to cannabis—the only treatment that provides relief for many. And there has been little progress on efforts in Congress to remedy the situation.

Building on longstanding policy that bars federal cannabis enforcement in medical marijuana states, the House of Representatives passed a measure that would instate a similar hands-off approach to enforcement in states that have generally legalized. Other measures would slash funding for the DEA, and call upon the FDA to promulgate regs for CBD.