Beijing's leading drug enforcement body has blamed the legalization of marijuana in Canada and parts of the United States for a spike in the amount of drugs smuggled into the country, describing it as a "new threat to China." Liu Yuejin, deputy director of the China National Narcotics Control Commission, said that the number of cannabis users in China had grown by more than 25% in 2018, rising to about 24,000 people. "In two years, we have found increasing cannabis trafficked from North America to China," he said, though he conceded there were "few cannabis abusers in China" relative to the total population. Anyone found with more than 50 grams of a controlled substance can face the death penalty in China. (See also: China nominates Hong Kong occupy-era police chief for UN post)

The United States has exported a counter-productive and destructive model to Latin America through the drug war. This is made clear in Systems Overload, a report released in May by the Transnational Institute and the Washington Office on Latin America.

President Biden pardoned thousands of people convicted of marijuana possession under federal law and said his administration would review whether marijuana should still be in the same legal category as drugs like heroin and LSD. The pardons will clear everyone convicted on federal charges of simple possession since it became a crime in the 1970s. Officials said full data was not available but noted that about 6,500 people were convicted of simple possession between 1992 and 2021, not counting legal permanent residents. The pardons will also affect people who were convicted under District of Columbia drug laws; officials estimated that number to be in the thousands. Biden urged governors to follow his lead for people convicted on state charges of simple possession, who vastly outnumber those charged under federal laws.

El presidente de Estados Unidos, Joe Biden, ha anunciado que perdona todas las condenas federales leves por posesión de marihuana. La medida, cargada de simbolismo, allana el camino hacia la despenalización total del uso del cannabis en el país, que ya es legal en muchos Estados: 37 han aprobado su uso médico; y en 19 está autorizado también su uso recreativo entre los adultos. Las autoridades calculan que esos indultos afectarán a unas 6.500 personas, condenadas por la ley federal entre 1992 y 2021, así como a otras miles en el Distrito de Columbia, el que alberga Washington. Nadie está cumpliendo ahora mismo una pena en una prisión federal por estos delitos leves, pero muchos sí cargan con antecedentes por esos motivos, lo que puede suponer un obstáculo para obtener un trabajo o acceder a una vivienda.

Ohioans rejected a very unusual marijuana legalization proposal. Beyond legalizing pot, the ballot initiative would have given campaign donors direct rights to the state's 10 pot farms as an explicit gift for their support. Even legalization advocates argued it was a flagrant display of would-be members of the pot industry trying to cash in on a movement motivated primarily by social justice issues. Some legalization backers are increasingly concerned that the interests of the pot industry, which will grow more and more as legalization spreads, will take priority over the public's best interests.

Illinois’ coffers have enjoyed a boost in tax revenue approaching the amount generated by booze sales thanks to the year that recreational marijuana has been legal there. But that success is dampened by the fact that the program’s loftier goal of bringing social equity to an industry dominated by wealthy white men hasn’t been met. Sales of highly taxed marijuana that have topped $1 billion are popular in a state with a $3.9 billion budget deficit. But other states are watching Illinois’ experiment that promised to ensure people of color could reap revenue in a rapidly growing, multi-billion dollar industry.” That’s not happening.

A publicly traded U.S. tobacco company has bought controlling stakes in two Canadian marijuana producers and invested in a North Carolina hemp grower, making what is believed to be the first foray by a significant tobacco business into the cannabis industry. Alliance One International, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol AOI, said it acquired a 75% equity position in Canada’s Island Garden and an 80% stake in Goldleaf Pharm. Terms of the transactions were not disclosed. The moves were first reported by New Cannabis Ventures.

A bipartisan duo of congressional lawmakers filed a resolution on Friday imploring President Joe Biden to wield his influence to get the United Nations (UN) to end the international ban on marijuana by removing the plant from the list of controlled substances in a global drug treaty. Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Barbara Lee (D-CA) introduced the measure as UN’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) wrapped up meetings for its 65th session this week in Vienna. CND in 2020 adopted a proposal to delete cannabis from Schedule IV of the 1961 Single Convention, but it currently remains in Schedule I, precluding member nations from legalizing the plant.

In the past year, 55 million Americans have used marijuana. The other 260 million are pretty divided in how they feel about that. It will probably not shock you to hear that a substance’s potential to cause addiction, health problems, and social harm has little to do with whether or not it’s legal. Instead, as law professor and criminologist Toby Seddon recently found in a wide-ranging study and historical review, there are two primary factors that influence what we consider to be drugs: race and money. These factors have long been deeply ingrained in how we view intoxication, from the origins of the War on Drugs in the 1970s to the responses to today’s opioid epidemic.

Prescriptions of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone are soaring, and experts say that could be a reason overdose deaths have stopped rising for the first time in nearly three decades. The number of naloxone prescriptions dispensed by U.S. retail pharmacies doubled from 2017 to last year, rising from 271,000 to 557,000, health officials reported. The United States is in the midst of the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in its history. About 68,000 people died of overdoses last year, according to preliminary government statistics reported last month, a drop from the more than 70,000 in 2017. "One could only hope that this extraordinary increase in prescribing of naloxone is contributing to that stabilization or even decline of the crisis," said Katherine Keyes, a Columbia University drug abuse expert.

Tres campesinos y un indígena awá han muerto en medio de operativos de erradicación forzada de cultivos de coca. Mientras esas comunidades piden suspender esta estrategia y cumplir el punto 4 del Acuerdo de Paz, el Gobierno anunció asistencia estadounidense. La Brigada de Asistencia a Fuerzas de Seguridad (SFAB, en inglés) del Comando Sur llega para “apoyar a Colombia en la lucha contra el narcotráfico”. Desde hace casi tres meses, cuando el Gobierno nacional declaró la emergencia sanitaria por el coronavirus, las comunidades campesinas que viven de cultivar hoja de coca le piden al Gobierno que suspenda las operaciones de erradicación forzada de los cultivos en sus territorios.(Véase también: Gobierno no detendrá erradicación de coca en la cuarentena: mindefensa)

A legal expert at an international immigration firm has warned British tourists and employees that if they smoke marijuana in the US, even in states where it has been legalised, they risk being barred from the country for life. UK visitors can still be arrested and deported from the US even if they consume cannabis in states such as California and Colorado, where the drug is legal, said Charlotte Slocombe, a senior partner at Fragomen in London. Slocombe says her firm and others that deal with US immigration laws have seen a rise in cases where British holidaymakers and green card holders, working legally in the US, are being expelled or denied entry because of cannabis consumption in states where it is legal.

La investigación sobre ciudadanos chinos dedicados al lavado de dinero procedente del narcotráfico ha revelado un nuevo modus operandi en el lavado internacional de capitales a través de la transferencia de dinero a China. Estos ciudadanos chinos envían el dinero procedente del narcotráfico recaudadao en Estados Unidos hasta los cárteles mexicanos, y lo hacen pasándolo a través de China mediante servicios de aplicaciones bancarias chinas y usando teléfonos desechables. Estas personas juegan un papel clave en los movimientos internacionales de blanqueo de dinero, y actúan como si fueran una especie de “brokers” del lavado.

Five years after cannabis legalization, California is awash with signs of an apparently booming industry. Californians can toke on Justin Bieber-branded joints and ash their blunts in Seth Rogen’s $95 ceramics. They can sip on THC-infused seltzers, relax inside a cannabis cafe, and get edibles delivered to their doors. But behind the flashy facade, the legal weed industry remains far from the law-abiding, prosperous sector many had hoped for. In fact, it’s a mess. Voters passed a law in November 2016 making recreational marijuana legal. But today, the vast majority of the market remains underground – about 80-90% of it, according to experts. (See also: ‘A farce of social equity’: California is failing its Black cannabis businesses)

California's legal pot market opens for business on Jan. 1. The day will be a milestone, but what exactly will happen then and, especially, in the weeks and months to come is unclear. Lori Ajax, the state's top pot regulator, has been at the center of the effort to establish rules for a legal pot economy valued at $7 billion. Businesses are required to have a local permit and a state license to open their doors for recreational sales, and that process has moved slowly. State law has specific guidelines for where not to light up, and they include being within 1,000 feet of a school or a daycare center when kids are around, or smoking while driving. (See also: Lawmakers, pot growers say California's marijuana cultivation rules favor big corporate farms)

In 2016, Californians voted to legalize recreational adult-use marijuana. Proponents of Proposition 64, including then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, argued that it would generate massive revenue, while decreasing illicit cannabis and drug cartel activity in California. Now, nearly six years later, it’s clear that promise has not been kept. While the state has collected billions in tax revenue from cannabis sales since legalization went into effect in 2018, billions more continue to pour into a thriving illicit market. A new report from cannabis website Leafly found that more than half of all cannabis sales in the state (55%) are in the illegal market. It means the product being sold hasn’t been subjected to the state’s rigorous testing and tracking regimen, and can contain harmful pesticides or other powerful narcotics.

The fight to legalize marijuana has never been easy, as evidenced by the recent collapse of months-long efforts in New Jersey and New York. A key issue in both is how to ensure that legalized cannabis doesn’t just create another privatized, corporate monopoly, but instead repairs the harm that has been done by the war on drugs. Legalizing cannabis, repairing the economy. Our guests say, reparations and restorative justice for workers in the budding cannabis industry need to be a part of the conversation. Featuring: Drug Policy Alliance‘s NY State Director Kassandra Frederique, Greenworker Cooperatives‘ Communications Director Raybblin Vargas, and Cannaclusive‘s Founder and CEO Mary Pryor.

A recent study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Addiction, found that a trio of policies adopted to combat the opioid overdose epidemic saved, combined, an estimated 3,030 lives in the Canadian province of British Columbia alone, between April 2016 and December 2017. The findings are a ringing endorsement of the policies adopted by the government of the province hit hardest by the epidemic: promoting access to the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, expanding access to supervised consumption or injection sites, and providing access to treatment known as opioid agonist therapy.