Chinese cannabis-related stocks have been getting way too high this year for Beijing’s taste, prompting a crackdown to control the investor mania. Marijuana growth and consumption is illegal in China, but cultivation of hemp is allowed in the southern province of Yunnan and in the northern province of Heilongjiang, which legalised the trade in 2010 and 2017 respectively. Though tightly controlled, China is the world’s largest hemp producing country and the biggest exporter of hemp paper and textiles, according to official figures. Hemp contains just a trace of psychoactive component THC, and is used industrially in things like clothing, paper and seed products.

The President of the Cannabis Revival Committee (CRC) in St Vincent and Grenadines, Junior “Spirit” Cottle, is urging farmers not to accept anything less than EC$300 (EC dollar = US$0.37 cents) for a pound after a locally-based medicinal cannabis company was offering US$50 a pound. “We are not saying we are not going higher. But we are not going below that. And, under the medical industry, we're looking for more than that. We will be negotiating but, as it stands now, under the amnesty, it mustn't go below that,” Cottle said. The CRC called on traditional cultivators of cannabis “to be on the lookout for some foreign investors who want to offer them lower than the unofficial EC$300 minimum which they have been receiving for one pound of cannabis”. (See also: Reject $50 ganja offer — MP)

Banning a plant with hundreds of industrial and medical uses was never going to work out well, but 2022 saw marijuana prohibition reach peak absurdity, not to mention peak confusion for consumers and new businesses trying to make sense of it all. At first glance, cannabis reform appears to be humming along smoothly. Maryland, Missouri and Rhode Island approved legalization initiatives in 2022 as states such as New Mexico and New York raced to establish regulations for legal recreational sales. New laws in mostly blue states expunged cannabis arrests from criminal records for thousands of people. President Joe Biden made moves to pardon federal marijuana prisoners and reconsider the federal “scheduling” of marijuana...

Many cannabis cultivation workers share common challenges. They frequently lack a living wage, benefits (like health care and retirement plans) or pathways for professional development. Workers and advocates are concerned that the growth of many companies amid the nationwide cannabis boom is coming at the expense of underpaid employees, while corporation heads rake in profits. United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) is the most active union working with cannabis workers, organizing with them since 2013. It now has more than 10,000 members in working laboratories, processing and manufacturing plants, cultivation facilities and medical and adult-use dispensaries. 

In a series of tweets on Sunday, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni uploaded photos of dagga plants growing on his farm in Limpopo, which he explained were occurring there naturally. The law around cannabis in South Africa is complex, after the Constitutional Court declared that private growth and use should be protected by rights to privacy. However, the plant remains a controlled substance according to the statute books. Many commentators have pointed out that a legal cannabis industry could contribute significantly to economic growth in South Africa, with detractors arguing that the plant is a “gateway drug” to more serious drug abuse.

The coordinator of the MORENA party at the Lower Chamber Mario Delgado Carrillo presented an initiative for the creation of a legal market for the purchase and sale of marijuana with the creation of a public company, owned by the government, called Cannsalud. The firm will be exclusively authorized to perform the purchase of cannabis and its derivatives from those that have obtained the corresponding licenses for such means. The initiative also considers the possibility for Mexicans to be able to grow their own cannabis. “Without the need of a license, they would be able to own, grow, harvest, prepare, or process up to six cannabis plants, as long as they are for personal use, allowing, too, shared use at home.”

It's the moment for which advocates of legal marijuana here have been waiting: Mexican lawmakers, working under a court order, have until mid-December to finalize rules that will make the country the world's largest market for legal pot. Advocates have long argued that legalization would put a dent in the black market; allow for safe, regulated consumption; create jobs; and cut down on crime. But rather than counting down the days with glee, they’re waging an 11th-hour campaign to change legislation that they say would favor large corporations over small businesses and family-owned farms, while doing little to address the issues at the root of the country’s illegal drug trade.

On November 19, the Senate began debating a bill that would make Mexico the third country in the world, after Uruguay and Canada, to legalise cannabis for recreational use nationwide. For Mexico, the change seems riskier. It was once the world’s largest producer of cannabis. Campaigners for legalisation are watching how it will go in a country where organised crime is strong, the rule of law is weak and much of the economy is undocumented. Mexico’s route to legalisation has been unusual, and its arrival may yet be delayed. In contrast to the U.S., where voters have endorsed reform in state referendums, legalisation has little popular support in Mexico. Surveys suggest that just over a third of voters favour it. (See also: Mexican Senate approves cannabis legalization bill, ending monthslong delay)

Mexico’s health ministry published rules to regulate the use of medicinal cannabis, a major step in a broader reform to create the world’s largest legal cannabis market in the Latin American country. The new regulation, signed off on by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, will now allow pharmaceutical companies to begin doing medical research on cannabis products. The cannabis reform taking place includes the recreational use of marijuana and would create the world’s biggest national cannabis market in terms of population. The new medicinal rules state companies that wish to carry out research have to obtain permission from the Mexican health regulator, COFEPRIS, and this research has to be done in strictly controlled and independent laboratories.

El Gobierno de México publicó las normativas para la producción y uso medicinal de cannabis y derivados farmacológicos. La reglamentación llega después de la reforma de la ley General de Salud en 2017 y después de que en el 2019 la Corte Suprema obligara a la secretaria de Salud a avanzar con el proceso. Ahora, el Congreso se prepara para legalizar el uso recreativo de marihuana, un movimiento que convertiría a México, con una población superior a los 126 millones de habitantes, en el mercado legal de cannabis más grande del mundo. El interés de las grandes empresas productoras extranjeras se ha vuelto un foco de preocupación para activistas mexicanos, que temen que las regulaciones favorezcan mayormente a los intereses comerciales, y sobre todo extranjeros.

Senate majority leader Ricardo Monreal expects a law to be passed before December for recreational use of the drug, allowing regulated private firms to sell it to the public. Indeed the legal cannabis industry is already a multi-billion-dollar global trade, and some big players, including Canada’s Canopy Growth and The Green Organic Dutchman, and a unit of California-based Medical Marijuana Inc, told Reuters they were eager to tap the new Mexican market. While a growing cannabis industry promises to be a money-spinner, it faces resistance from campaigners who are worried that regulations for both medical and non-medical cannabis will heavily favor big, often foreign corporations.

The exodus of cannabis executives in Canada is in full swing after their companies raked up collective net losses exceeding CA$6 billion ($4.4 billion) in 2019, the first calendar year recreational products were allowed to be sold. Most of Canada’s top cannabis producers have replaced their chief executives or chief financial officers after failing to meet customer and investor expectations. Experts say the CEOs spent too much money on greenhouses, were too focused on investors and did not pay enough attention to customers, real markets or quality control. Many simply lacked the professional toolkit necessary to steer a cannabis company and ended up chasing too many opportunities in far-flung areas of the world where actual marijuana markets remain years away.

Authorities in Thailand overseeing a flood of patents for medical cannabis must consider the public interest, otherwise a commercial monopoly of the medicines and cultivation would result, experts warn. Advocacy group Thai Drug Watch said that the Intellectual Property Department is jeopardising public access to cannabinoid medicines and other drugs by limiting its focus to the economic benefits for big business. This would place full control over the entire product chain of medical cannabis in the hands of transnational pharmaceutical companies, it added. (See also: Will Thailand’s legal medical marijuana seed a new black market?)

2023 may be the year of his first legal cannabis harvest in Morocco. After years of semi-underground, Aziz has decided to move over to "the legal side." The farmer from the Rif, a mountainous region in northern Morocco that is home to one of the world's largest cannabis-producing areas, intends to turn his back on drug traffickers and sell his kif to companies involved in the manufacture of cannabis products. "Two Americans came to the village a few days ago," he said. "They want to build a factory in the area and will need large quantities. They are interested in our plants. We haven't talked about price yet." "What I fear is that the benefits will go to the state, laboratories and multinationals and that we will be left behind," said Farid, in his fifties, who grows kif in a nearby village.

Reforming the Cannabis industry into one which earns maximum benefits globally, is the goal of newly appointed Chairman for the Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA), LeVaughn Flynn. Flynn, who has written several articles advocating for the cannabis industry, said he believes the industry is at a very interesting point, where there is transformation, and is elated to lead the process that will benefit Jamaicans. “We've seen the rescheduling and reclassification of cannabis by the United Nations and also by the US Government, and those things give us the impression that potentially, in another couple years, we could have cannabis legalised at the Federal level in the US, and when that happens, that completely opens the global free trade for cannabis,” he said.

While legalization in Canada is delayed until October 17th, 2018, Canadians are celebrating as micro-licenses are finally coming out, ushering in the second wave of legalization. These micro-licenses are revolutionary for the industry, including smaller cultivators and processors more able to adapt to local consumer demand. Additionally, black-market genetics will finally be regulated. There will be no restrictions on how many licenses an individual can possess, opening the door to cannabis co-ops with decentralized diverse distribution systems. With calls for cannabis amnesty reaching the mainstream news, Health Canada finally announced that they will not discriminate against those with previous non-violent cannabis convictions.

When cannabis is legalized, a lot is at stake for the existing, state-level industry. The entrepreneurs who make up weed’s $33.8 billion market are predominantly small business owners. A new report says they’re worth protecting. The report, How to Federally Legalize Cannabis Without Violating the Constitution or Undermining Equity and Justice,” was ideated by the Parabola Center for Law and Policy. It offers a clear blueprint for Congress to protect the cannabis industry, ensure justice, and not obliterate the hard work that the states have done in the last decade. America’s weed industry is made up of over 10,000 small businesses providing an estimated 400,000 jobs across the country. The report was written to address “concerns that federal marijuana legalization would wipe out current state markets and replace them with a national monopoly.”