Cannabis Chronicles

Gun control opponents are often quoted as saying, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” It’s their way of saying that lacking a firearm, there are still plenty of ways that an angry individual can harm another with fatal intent and results.
With that in mind, every time we see a death in the drug [...]

As reported earlier this week in Time Magazine, based on a study published in the Public Library of Science, the residents of the the US had among the highest levels of use of all recreational/illicit drugs in the world. Here’s the story itself . . .

Friday, Jul. 11, 2008
An American Pastime: Smoking Pot
By [...]

In an earlier posting here at the Cannabis Chronicles called Roundup Woes, we detailed a bit of the economic problem agrochemicals giant Monsanto is having with the production of it’s leading herbicide. While further researching Fusarium fungus for our recent series of journal entries called Fusarium Attack, we discovered another significant problem with the [...]

The earlier articles in our series on the use of Fusarium as a bio-herbicide in the drug war focused on the debate as it happened circa 1999-2002. This entry helps to bring the story more up to date, it comes from a website called the Narco News Bulletin which we discovered while researching “Plan [...]

The following take on the escalation of the drug war through the use of biological herbicides comes from CounterPunch, a bi-weekly muckraking newsletter with a radical attitude who advertises that: “Nothing makes us happier than when CounterPunch readers write in to say how useful they’ve found our newsletter in their battles against the war machine, [...]

The Cannabis Chronicles ongoing archive of stories documenting the history of efforts to use Fusarium as a bio-herbicide weapon in the drug war now continues with another entry that originated in the New York Times . . .

Drug War Awaits Attack of Killer Fungus
By JIM ROBBINS

July 18, 2000
Dr. David C. Sands holds out a [...]

As was detailed in the previous entry here at the Cannabis Chronicles, a movement was started in the late 1990’s to use Fusarium fungus as a bio-herbicide to exterminate both Cannabis and Coca. Our archival coverage continues with another article from 1999, this one from a magazine called the New Scientist.

Operation Eradicate
* 11 September [...]

This journal entry begins a series we are calling “Fusarium Attack”, which will detail some of the history behind wrong headed efforts to employ the Fusarium fungus as a bio-control agent in the war on drugs.
The first article in this series that we’ll add to the Cannabis Chronicles archive is from the New York Times [...]

Last month in Afghanistan, NATO led troops were reported to have confiscated and destroyed what may very well have been the world’s largest hashish cache . . .
Jets Bomb World’s Biggest Drugs Haul
The world’s biggest haul of drugs - worth more than £200m - has been discovered in Afghanistan and blown up by [...]

In yet another case of a marijuana shipment gone bad, an attempted delivery of 200 pounds of cannabis from Florida to Maryland went awry last week. It’s reported that the package of pot was accidentally dropped at the wrong address, leading to the police being tipped off about the illicit nature of the package’s [...]

While we’re on the topic of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the annual Hash Bash. With a history stretching all the way back to 1972, it’s one of the longest running pro-marijuana demonstrations in North America.
Here’s coverage of this year’s event, as originally reported by [...]

As is so often the case, some of the best coverage we’ve found concerning the Black Tuna gang comes from a weekly publication. Last month (June ‘08), the Miami New Times, covered Robert Platshorn’s release from prison with the article that actually inspired the Cannabis Chronicles’ in depth coverage/archiving of material on the Black [...]

In addition to coverage in the mainstream media, the alternative media caught on to the Black Tuna Gang story too. High Times, the oldest and most well established marijuana magazine in North America, (sorry Marc - your Cannabis Culture is a relative newcomer,) also covered some of this fish tale.
The first High Times article [...]

In somewhat the same tradition as Howard Marks, there’s a website authored by the man who was tried and convicted on a variety of charges related to his marijuana smuggling operation known as the Black Tuna Gang. Also in the tradition of Mr Nice, the Black Tuna kingpin has authored a book about his [...]