Southeast Asia, a region of 11 countries and some 680 million people, has long been infamous for having the strictest anti-drug laws in the world. But in a sign that regional leaders are mulling a new approach, Thailand became the first country in Asia to decriminalize marijuana for medical and other purposes. Smoking weed for fun is still illegal, Thai’s health minister clarified to CNN, but he expects legal cannabis production to boost the economy. Over 3,000 inmates incarcerated in Thai prisons for marijuana-related offenses were freed. Martin Jelsma at the Transnational Institute (TNI) in Amsterdam, says a common Southeast Asian approach to regulating marijuana and other narcotics is unlikely to happen. But he believes that in a region “so plagued by excessively repressive drug policies, the positive influence of Thailand’s recent policy changes on the regional debate is most welcome.”

As 2019 slouched toward its end, many predictions of what might happen with cannabis in 2020 had been tinged with optimism. Chronic Town was no different: in this space last week I sounded a hopeful note that, if pot isn't legalized at the federal level this year, at least the Senate might finally pass the SAFE Banking Act, shielding financial institutions from liability for serving the cannabis industry with a basic business function available to every other form of legal commerce. But hopes were dashed this past week. The law, especially federal law, is still the legal industry's biggest impediment by far. Cannabis won't become a fully legitimate, thriving industry until Congress unshackles it.

Cannabis dealers who stuck hundreds of unauthorised adverts on London's Tube trains say they are now swamped with orders and have more guerrilla marketing tactics up their sleeve. Dispenseroo, a cannabis selling start-up which mimics the branding of online food delivery giant Deliveroo, said over the last three weeks it had put up 2,500 adverts on London Underground trains. The posters, which were clipped or glued into advert panels by 10 workers employed via job site Gumtree, said: “Do you love 🍃? Use code ‘tube’ for £5 off,” alongside the Dispenseroo hashtag. Transport for London confirmed the posters were unauthorised and said it was removing any found on the network.

Shops selling bhang, have to obtain and frequently renew their licence from the local excise department before selling it in various forms, the most popular being the thandai. This is made by boiling a mixture of milk, sugar, poppy seeds, pepper, ginger, cloves, cardamom, almonds, pistachios, nutmeg, and rosebuds with bhang. For the government-licensed bhang shops, obtaining the raw material in the form of crushed leaves and stems is a rather straightforward process. The cultivation-distribution-sale chain is also not uniform in all the states. The NDPS Act allows states to formulate their own policies on distribution and cultivation, while steering clear of what is explicitly prohibited by the law. 

Since 2012, 11 states have legalized marijuana use for adults — which voters nationwide are considering on their ballots this year. Researchers are just beginning to understand the effects of those laws. Colorado and Washington were the first states to legalize the drug, and California, the most populous state in the nation, followed them. Among the most pointed concerns with legalization are whether it has caused more young people to use the drug and whether more people are dying in auto crashes caused by impaired drivers. Data show little change in either area. Surveys of young people in Colorado, for example, show a slight decline in the percentage of middle and high school students using the drug. In Washington, the rates have remained the same.

Marijuana possession led to nearly 6 percent of all arrests in the United States in 2017, FBI data shows, underscoring the level of policing dedicated to containing behavior that’s legal in 10 states and the nation’s capital. But the figure obscures the considerable variations in enforcement practices at the state and local levels. In many areas of the country in 2016, more than 20 percent of all arrests stemmed from pot possession, according to newly released county-level arrest figures from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data. The figure exceeds 40 percent in a handful of counties, topping out at nearly 55 percent in one Georgia county.

Joe Biden has selected Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as his vice presidential running mate. She has evolved significantly on marijuana policy over her career. Though she coauthored an official voter guide argument opposing a California cannabis legalization measure as a prosecutor in 2010, she went on to sponsor legislation to federally deschedule marijuana in 2019. Harris is the chief Senate sponsor of the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act—a comprehensive piece of legalization legislation that includes various social equity and restorative justice provisions. Advocates will be watching to see if she continues to advocate for the reform move as she’s on-boarded to the Biden campaign. (See also: 67% of Americans are ready to end federal cannabis prohibition)

Local governments in New York State are debating whether or not to ban recreational cannabis sales. They can either “opt in” or “opt out,” but they have to choose. Fast approaching is a December 31 deadline set by the state—if municipalities don’t take action before then, sales will automatically be legal in their city limits. New York State legalized adult-use cannabis in April 2021. Under the law, municipal governments must choose whether or not to allow recreational cannabis sales, including through dispensaries and on-site consumption lounges. If they take no action by the end of the year, such sales will become legal by default. If a city bans cannabis sales, it can reverse course and opt in at a later date. But once it allows cannabis sales, it cannot ban them again.

With states legalizing marijuana by popular vote, some politicians, including Boston mayor Marty Walsh and New Jersey governor Chris Christie, are still calling marijuana a gateway drug. Most of the research linking marijuana to harder drug use comes from the correlation between the two. However, as any junior scientist can tell you, correlation does not mean causation. On the periphery of the marijuana-as-gateway-drug debates are studies showing marijuana as beneficial for the treatment of opiate addicts. These have been largely ignored.

When Canada legalised marijuana just over a year ago, it seemed like anyone who was anyone wanted to break into the market. The media nicknamed the frenzy Canada's "green rush", as investors like Snoop Dogg and the former head of Toronto's police force clamoured to get a slice of the multi-billion-dollar-pie. But like the gold rush of the 1850s, the lustre would soon fade, leaving prospectors in the dust. "It didn't take a rocket scientist to recognise that these stocks were trading on fantasy and not on fundamentals," says Jonathan Rubin, CEO of New Leaf Data Services. In Canada, he says, the rollout has been disappointing. "They haven't had the growth in sales and earnings that they've envisioned," he said. "I don't want to say it's a failure, but there's definitely frustrations."

As Canadians deal with the highest inflation in decades and broadening price hikes, one industry remains locked in a lengthy trend of discounting and bargain rates: cannabis. Laden with inventory, producers and retailers of marijuana have been slashing the prices of their products to bring in cash and fight for market share – a situation that is wildly different from the state of affairs in most other industries, in which broad economic forces are pushing up prices among competitors. Prices for recreational and medicinal cannabis have dropped by 8.3 per cent and 10.2 per cent, respectively, over the past year, and by roughly 25 per cent in both categories since the end of 2018, according to Statistics Canada.

Rolling Stone dubs weed a “climate villain,” as cannabis sold in any state where it’s legal must be grown in-state. Because not every state boasts the year-round warm climate that cannabis thrives in, the vast majority of cannabis is grown indoors in large facilities. And there are other reasons indoor growing is thriving, as Evan Mills pointed out in a recent Slate piece, from misconceptions about the potency of cannabis grown indoors to budtenders who “tend to toss outdoor-grown product onto the bottom shelf.” Mills argues that the only way to make cannabis truly “green” is to grow it outside.

Even though legislation in 2008 made it possible to grow cannabis for medical or scientific purposes in Lesotho, doing so without a licence from the health ministry, and for recreational use, remains illegal. The Basotho people, many of whom have grown cannabis for decades, say only the elite and multinationals have benefited from the legislation that was heralded as something that would spread the economic gains among many. Lesotho’s politicians have talked about opening up the industry to benefit ordinary people. Emmanuel Letete, then an economist at the ministry for development planning, said in 2019 that cannabis was going to “set the country free”.

As New York prepares to legalize adult-use cannabis, whether the illicit market will thrive or die seems like an important question. The best place to look to see how legalization affected the illicit market is the Emerald Triangle in Northern California, which is the epicenter of cannabis cultivation in America. When California legalized adult-use one of the main questions was around whether all the illegal production would go above board with recreational use. The answer was no. “I’m speculating, but the same dynamic could happen in New York,” Erick Eschker, an economics professor at Humboldt State University, says.

When Canopy Growth Corp. announced a plan to acquire cannabis researcher Ebbu Inc. for US$330 million last October, it touted the company’s intellectual property as the primary reason for the deal, mentioning it five times in the short press release. A year later, Canopy is struggling to turn that intellectual property into patents. One of Ebbu’s first applications was rejected twice by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. When it was then narrowed significantly in a renewed attempt at approval, it was rejected a third time. The difficulties Ebbu has faced in securing patents point to a broader issue in the pot sector, where many companies tout their intellectual property but few have successfully obtained exclusive rights to their inventions.

Parliament passed the new Narcotics Control Commission Bill, 2019, which enhanced the powers of the country’s Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) to oversee the industrial use of some narcotic substances. In the bill, parliament decided to incorporate a clause that will allow for the industrial use of cannabis with THC level of not more than 0.3 percent. This is to allow companies producing jute sacks for cocoa and other produce to set up their plants and produce them locally instead of importing them from India and other countries. However, this has been misconstrued by some Ghanaians to mean legalization of cannabis for personal use, which is not the case. (See also: Parliament has not legalized ‘wee’ for public consumption - MP)

There are plenty of predictions about how cannabis farming is poised to go corporate, but Big Marijuana is not inevitable, says Ryan Stoa, a professor of law at Concordia University. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. But Stoa, the author of Craft Weed: Family Farming and the Future of the Marijuana Industry,argues that in a world where cannabis is legal, there is a route for cannabis agriculture to stay sustainable and local. The Verge spoke to Stoa about what’s fending off a corporate takeover, potential legal regulations that could help the industry remain small, and the environmental impact of farming. (See also: Can artisanal weed compete with ‘Big Marijuana’?)

The city of Copenhagen should be growing its own weed, said its mayor. According to Social Democrat Frank Jensen, the Danish capital can only get a grip on its huge trade in Cannabis if the state itself muscles in and displaces the pushers. Aware that a municipal government peddling its own grass might sound a little crunchy, Jensen is emphasizing the proposal's seriousness. "This isn’t a hippie proposal," he told newspaper Berlingske. "It's being discussed by people in suits and ties." (Editorial: Legalize marijuana on a trial basis)

Düsseldorf will als erste deutsche Stadt Verkauf und Konsum von Cannabis legalisieren. Dem Körper ist es egal, wie die Droge erworben wurde, meint Gesundheitsdezernent Andreas Meyer-Falcke. Aufklärung, Prävention und der Jugendschutz müssten im Mittelpunkt des Projekts stehen. Der entscheidende Impuls zu einer präventiven Neuausrichtung der städtischen Drogenpolitik kommt aus dem Düsseldorfer Stadtrat. Der Rats-Fachausschuss für Gesundheit und Soziales hat die Verwaltung beauftragt, beim Bundesinstitut für Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte (BfArM) eine Ausnahmegenehmigung zum Betrieb von lizenzierten Abgabestellen von Cannabisprodukten in Düsseldorf zu beantragen.

Despite opposition from federal drug regulators, the Berlin Senatis reportedly pushing ahead with a pilot project to sell cannabis legally in pharmacies. The city-state government plans to fight the regulator's objections in court. The news was broken by tabloidBZ,but Senatsources have confirmed the report to Berliner Zeitung. The controlled sale of cannabis is part of the coalition agreement between the SPD, Die Grüne and Die Linke. "The aim is to encourage consumers to use less risky and reduced amounts," a government spokesperson told the paper. The project envisages offering cannabis for sale in Berlin pharmacies to a limited number of customers. Buyers would be required to keep a diary of their use.