Gloria Indica
Hi! Welcome to the 19th edition of Gloria Indica, our newsletter written specifically for Wednesdays and Thursdays. If you’re reading this for the first time, then welcome. This is our newsletter when we tend to focus a bit more on the cannabis, business and technology narratives blazing across the world of ours today. As more and more people start finding their voice and begin speaking out, the better it is for all of us, because the right, stable voices will always come out to the fore, as always, with a few mistakes being an inevitable part of the process.
Let’s start blazing.
Blazing Scenes In Mexico
The Mexican people are so vocal about legalizing cannabis that they’ve planted around 1000 cannabis plants in front of the Mexican Senate Building, so that lawmakers will have to watch people strolling among the plants and enjoying the atmosphere. Many professionals in the cannabis markets of the west say that once recreational cannabis is legalized, Mexico will be the largest legal cannabis market in the world. Why they say so is not exactly clear. Here’s the Los Angeles Times fresh from the Mexican ground:
“Mexico’s marijuana revolution is on display steps from the nation’s Senate, where for the last nine months activists have maintained a fragrant cannabis garden. Each day, hundreds of people stroll amid a labyrinth of towering green plants, freely lighting joints and getting high. Their wafting smoke is meant to serve as a reminder to senators, who have to walk through the plumes to get to work. Lawmakers have until Dec. 15 to pass pot legislation under orders from the Supreme Court, which two years ago struck down a marijuana ban as unconstitutional. After decades of restrictive drug policies that fueled deadly cartel wars, Mexico is poised to become the biggest legal cannabis market in the world.”
This is next level activism from the Mexicans. There was also a time when a few senate members bought a joint and a cannabis plant into the Mexican legislative session proceedings in order to calm down the sober people about the plant. We also know how legalization is bound to increase the pressure on the economics of drug cartels who will then need to abandon their cannabis business in light of consumer demand moving to legal channels, freeing up the police force to focus on harder, synthetic drugs. Again from LA Times:
“For decades, marijuana flowed in one direction across the U.S.-Mexico border: north. These days, drug enforcement agents regularly seize specialty strains of retail-quality cannabis grown in the United States being smuggled south. Widespread legalization in the U.S. is killing Mexico’s marijuana business, and cartel leaders know it. They are increasingly abandoning the crop that was once their bread and butter and looking elsewhere for profits, producing and exporting drugs including heroin and fentanyl and banking on extortion schemes and fuel theft.”
Mexico is another country heading for a December vote.
Let’s keep blazing.
India’s Film Industry Wants To Sue The Blazes Out of Indian Media
In many previous newsletters we had stated how many Indian English media channels, the ones who usually set the agenda for the rest of India’s media houses to follow, were peddling bad logic from time to time, without any basis in fact. The crux of any media house is to report the truth, but increasingly select media houses were trying to become detectives, as if wanting to shape the law on their own right; all of it being consumed brazenly by India’s masses ever since actor Sushant SIngh Rajput’s death. Interested readers can head to YouTube and find out what we’re talking about.
“In a rare show of unity, 38 leading cinema associations and production houses of India’s Hindi cinema have joined together to sue two TV news channels for allegedly making “irresponsible, derogatory and defamatory remarks” against the film industry. The petitioners include production houses owned by superstar actors Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan and Salman Khan, and comes roughly four months after the death of actor Sushan Singh Rajput, whose apparent suicide sparked a rush of media coverage dubbed by many a “trial by media”.”
Make no mistake, this is big. It will be interesting to know how the law will be interpreted by the lawyers on each side, and the sort of political capital that will be expended by the two English media houses for this one. Sushant Singh Rajput hailed from Bihar, a state that is soon going to head for elections in November while Rhea C is from Bengal, another state that is heading for elections in May, 2021. This can be a coincidence or not. Let’s blaze ahead.
“The complainants said that “the plea comes in the wake of these channels using highly derogatory words and expressions for Bollywood such as ‘dirt’, ‘filth’, ‘scum’, ‘druggies’ and expressions such as ‘it is Bollywood where the dirt needs to be cleaned’, ‘all the perfumes of Arabia cannot take away the stench and the stink of this filth and scum of the underbelly of Bollywood’, ‘This is the dirtiest industry in the country’, and ‘cocaine and LSD-drenched Bollywood’. “The livelihood of persons associated with Bollywood is being severely impacted by the smear campaign being run by the defendants,” the petitioners said, in the suit filed before the Delhi High Court.”
Our personal opinion is this: there is a very thin line between making opinions and stating facts.
Calling an industry that represents the soft power of Indian cinema and culture all over the world ‘the dirtiest industry in the country’? Every industry has good and bad people, both. ‘Cocaine and LSD-drenched Bollywood’? They make it sound as if the entire film fraternity is doing drugs all day. Trust us, they’re not doing it everyday. If they were, they would go bankrupt and dysfunctional in no time. We’re tripping about thinking how the judges assigned to this case are going to draw the lines between what media anchors can and cannot say. Very very tricky in our opinion.
Let’s keep blazing.
Long Live Odisha. Congratulations Odisha Police.
Our hearty congratulations to the Odisha Police for seizing over 1000 quintals of cannabis this year so far. 1 quintal is 100 kilograms. So that’s 100000 kilograms. From one single state.
This will not change anything. Sorry Police. Your work will not reduce the demand for cannabis among India’s cannabis consumers. The cannabis plant has been around for at least 20 million years, while humans have been around for 7 million, of which police forces have been seizing cannabis en masse for the last 20 years. Your work will not even make an iota of difference to the spread of the cannabis plant.
While we appreciate the effort, we’re also sorry to say that it has been for nothing.
Here’s the Hindu reporting from Odisha:
“The Odisha police on Tuesday claimed massive success in tracking the movement of cannabis consignments by seizing more than 1,000 quintals of the illicit substance this year. The Special Task Force, the Crime Branch of Police and the district police personnel have together seized 1,054 quintals of weed by September 30. “The average annual seizure of ganja during the past 10 years has been 312 quintals. If we take the average of the past five years, it would go up to 414 quintals. However, our law enforcement agencies have managed to confiscate 1,054 quintals of cannabis — 2.5 times of average annual seizure of the last five years,” said DGP Abhay at a press conference in Cuttack.”
“Mr. Abhay said the Koraput district had led in ganja seizure by confiscating 413 quintals this year followed by 240 quintals by Malkanagiri and 126 quintals by Gajapati district. The SPs of these districts have been appreciated for their efforts. “Apart from the seizure of ganja, we have intensified financial investigation with a focus on unravelling conspiracy and detecting the brain behind the cultivation and evacuation of cannabis,” he said. The DGP said Odisha is a marijuana-producing State and efforts are on to stop illegal cultivation in accessible and forested regions. An action plan was finalised at a recent high-level meeting attended by the Excise Secretary and the Addl. DGP (Crime Branch).”
We request the Odisha government to use the cannabis for productive purposes like handing it over to India’s medical and industrial cannabis companies. That state stands to make billions and here their government officials and law enforcement agencies are trying to waste this valuable product. Not only can they put more money in the hands of their poor farmers, but also tap a world market. They must wake up and understand.
Let’s keep blazing. Have a great day 🙂
Marijuana Maharaj 