The opportunity to commercialise the hemp and cannabis industry in South Africa is that it is a new, fast-growing, multi-billion dollar sector with local and international markets. The potential legal pharmaceutical market for hemp and cannabis in South Africa alone has been estimated at over R100 billion a year. But there are challenges. First, that the government fails to implement changes needed to ensure the sector grows in a way that benefits township and rural entrepreneurs farmers. The second is that, from mid-2022, small scale farmers farming cannabis promised to be issued with licences to farm legally. However, some farmers in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape are still waiting.

Business and advocates both play a key role in furthering marijuana legalization, but finding the ideal balance is proving difficult. That was particularly evident with Ohio’s ill-fated legalization measure, which seemed to shove aside the wants and needs of traditional advocates and marijuana supporters in favor of big businesses and investors. The issue resurfaced again last week when a former Marijuana Policy Project official pegged the industry’s growing influence on legalization efforts as a reason for his departure from the influential organization. (Netflix Co-Founder Mitch Lowe: Who’s Driving the $60 Billion Cannabis Market Revolution?)

Este 6 de julio se cumplen 4 años de la ley 1787, la cual reguló el cannabis medicinal y científico en Colombia. Esta norma nació como una opción de tratamiento y como una industria con gran oportunidad económica. Aunque la industria aún no ha despegado en esas proporciones y el coronavirus ha frenado procesos, el balance que hacen desde varios sectores es positivo, más aún teniendo en cuenta que la ley fue reglamentada hasta 2017 con el decreto 613, que sentó las bases para que Colombia tenga hoy más de 970 licencias de cannabis y un cupo de producción de 56 toneladas al año. (Véase también: Trámites digitales, nuevo impulso a industria del cannabis medicinal)

Many African states that persecuted citizens for cannabis related offences for years are now promoting legal cannabis production. Over the past five years 10 countries have passed laws to legalise production for medical and scientific purposes. These include Lesotho, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, Eswatini, Rwanda and Morocco. South Africa has also legalised the private growing of cannabis plants by adults for their own personal consumption. The cannabis policy liberalisation in Africa has been brought about by two main factors. One is the lobbying by local activists. Cannabis use is still criminalised in most African countries. The other factor is the emergence of the global legal cannabis industry projected to grow to nearly US$200 billion by 2028.

Wholesale cannabis prices could hit as low as $30 an ounce in some parts of the U.S. as another record crop of outdoor cannabis floods markets and sinks prices. The legal recreational market in Oregon continues to drown in a multi-year surplus. Oregon produced 10 times the cannabis it needs each year, and approximately 825,000 pounds of unsold dried wholesale flower now sits in the state’s tracking system, says Jonathan Rubin, CEO of Cannabis Benchmarks, which tracks wholesale prices. The trends point to what many people expected: a segmentation of the flower market into commodity products and, importantly, premium craft products that consumers will pay top dollar for at retail.

Canadian cannabis producer Canopy Growth said it is closing its flagship cultivation facility in Smiths Falls, Ontario, and cutting more than a third of its workforce as part of a shift to an “asset-light model” in Canada. Canopy disclosed the new strategy as it reported a net loss of 267 million Canadian dollars ($200 million) for its fiscal third quarter, bringing the struggling company’s red ink in the first three quarters of the year to CA$2.6 billion. Canopy said it is cutting its workforce by approximately 35%. The layoffs come as cannabis companies across North America have been shedding hundreds of jobs and closing facilities because of failing business plans, falling wholesale prices and recession worries.

Significant policy shifts have led to an unprecedented boom in medical cannabis markets, while a growing number of countries are moving towards the legal regulation of adult non-medical use. This trend is likely to bring a range of benefits. Yet there are growing concerns over the many for-profit cannabis companies from the global North that are aggressively competing to capture the licit spaces now opening in the multibillion-dollar global cannabis market. This threatens to push small-scale traditional farmers from the global South out of the emerging legal markets.

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The cannabis business has arrived at a critical moment. Now that pot has become something like a regular consumer product, customers are increasingly seeking the same “proven consistency” they expect from potato chips. The financial stakes are clear: Despite lingering prohibitions in 17 states, legal cannabis is already an $8 billion industry in the United States. Domestic sales of alcohol topped $200 billion last year. But to make cannabis as popular as booze requires solving that original problem: It’s hard to imagine millions of people becoming new recreational users without being able to promise them that the product they’re spending money on will give them the effect they want. (See also: Cannabis researchers want to take the mystery out of weed. Here's why that's a mistake)

Finance minister Tito Mboweni expects the newly legal cannabis industry to pour an estimated R4 billion into the government’s dwindling tax coffers while simultaneously unlocking the country’s stagnant rural economy, he said in a tweet earlier this year. But will this potential windfall benefit ordinary people? Many South Africans are excited about the opportunities presented by this new market, since the Constitutional Court decriminalised the use, possession, and cultivation of the plant for private and personal consumption in September 2018. But there is a strict and costly bureaucratic red tape preventing most people from penetrating it.

The Black Farmers' Association of South Africa (BFASA) have threatened to shut down the regulatory authority for allegedly excluding them from opportunities in the rapidly growing cannabis industry. BFASA says it has written to the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) amid concerns that the cannabis industry is not being steered in a sustainable nor inclusive manner. "SAPHRA has maliciously and deliberately blocked every aspect of the cannabis and hemp industry. Job creation. Investment from keen investors. Untold agricultural, industrial, recreational, and traditional healing methods are thwarted selfishly," Dr Lennox Xolile Mtshagi, BFASA’s national president, wrote in his letter to SAHPRA. "SAHPRA has handed the cannabis industry to 'white monopoly colonialists'."

Le pétrole vert du Maroc fait saliver les nouvelles industries émergentes qui promettent des produits miracles à base de cannabis. Malgré les perspectives économiques prometteuses qui s'offrent au pays, le courage politique fait défaut à l'Etat et aux partis politiques, tandis que le peuple de l'herbe continue à fumer en cachette.  Enfin l’Etat, conscient des risques politiques de ces démarches, s’est enfermé dans son mutisme habituel, tout en poursuivant sa coûteuse politique de coercition vis-à-vis du trafic de drogue. La légalisation de la culture du cannabis passera nécessairement par une volonté politique d'en haut qui, par effet de "ruissellement", peut faire aboutir ce projet.

Las últimas semanas han sido críticas para la regulación del cannabis en nuestro país. Hasta hace unos días, sabíamos que el Congreso de la Unión tenía como el 30 de octubre como fecha límite para regular el mercado de cannabis y así cumplir con el mandato que le dio la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación después de la creación de jurisprudencia en la materia.Sin embargo, esto no sucedió y, a solicitud de extensión del Congreso, la Corte alargó el periodo de gracia hasta el término del siguiente periodo de sesiones, es decir, el 30 de abril. ¿Cómo es que un Congreso que tiene decenas de iniciativas disponibles para nutrir el dictamen, que ha organizado incontables foros y ha recibido insumos valiosísimos de sociedad civil, no logra cumplir con su trabajo en tiempo y forma?

Canopy Growth’s chief executive earned 1,042 times more than the median compensation for the cannabis producer’s other employees in fiscal 2020. The partial-year compensation for CEO David Klein was about $33.8 million (CA$45 million), including salary, bonus, stock options and other compensation, the Smiths Falls, Ontario-based company disclosed in its proxy statement released after the fiscal year ended March 31. That likely puts Klein – who began his job in mid-January – among the top CEO earners in Canada across all industries. He inherited a company that lost CA$1.39 billion in fiscal year 2020.

Canopy Growth is ceasing cannabis cultivation in Africa, Canada, Colombia and the United States in a bid to “improve efficiencies” in its global operations. The company also said it is eliminating 85 full-time positions. Almost half the workforce reduction is coming from the company’s Colombian operations. The downsizing does not affect Europe. Canopy’s pullback comes after Canadian producers raked up collective net losses exceeding 6 billion Canadian dollars ($4.5 billion) in 2019, the first calendar year recreational cannabis products were allowed to be sold in Canada. Many companies, including Canopy and competitor Aurora Cannabis, invested heavily in far-flung areas of the world, where actual medical marijuana markets remain years – maybe decades – away.

St Vincent and the Grenadines Minister of Agriculture, Saboto Caesar is calling for Caricom and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to take a collective approach to the development of standards governing the negotiation of cannabis trade agreements for their member states. Caesar said small Caribbean states should no longer be competing against each other.  He said if the Caribbean as a region intends to fully realise the opportunity that the fast-growing cannabis industry presents, it must develop a unified approach and ensures a seat at the international table.  (See also: T&T riding last wave in $m marijuana train)

China has made your iPhone, your Nikes. Now, it wants to grow your cannabis. Two of China’s 34 regions are quietly leading a boom in cultivating cannabis to produce cannabidiol, or CBD, the nonintoxicating compound that has become a consumer health and beauty craze in the United States and beyond. They are doing so even though cannabidiol has not been authorized for consumption in China, a country with some of the strictest drug-enforcement policies in the world. “It has huge potential,” said Tan Xin, the chairman of Hanma Investment Group, which in 2017 became the first company to receive permission to extract cannabidiol here in southern China. The chemical is marketed abroad.

The four-year-old Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA) reached another major milestone last week by issuing its 50th licence for medicinal use of the drug. The 50th licensee is Outlier Biopharma, a Montego Bay-based company, which provides consulting and advisory services to companies that wish to expand capacity and lower their operational cost, while improving their return on investment. In making the announcement, the CLA acknowledged that, as at October 31 this year, it had issued a total of 49 licences. There are a further 16 applications at the granted stage that will be issued on the payment of the respective fees and security bonds. In addition, there are 259 applications at the conditionally approved stage. (See also: Americans behind Jamaica's latest medical hemp company)

Interest in Colombia’s medical marijuana market is booming, but out of over 100 licensed cannabis companies operating in the country few have finished registering their first cultivars, a prerequisite to growing crops for commercial purposes. So far, no company is selling or exporting medical cannabis commercially. That highlights the challenges still facing businesses operating in Colombia’s medical marijuana industry. A year ago, most Colombian cannabis companies were focused on obtaining licenses and securing funding. Today, many boast immense licensed areas, theoretical production capacities, sophisticated marketing plans and low expected costs of production. But mandatory regulatory issues still remain the key hurdle likely to separate the leaders from the rest of the pack.

Other countries are passing laws to permit the production, import and export of medical marijuana but Colombia has a leg up because it did so three years ago, says Rodrigo Arcila, president of the Colombian Cannabis Industry Association. He said the group's 29 member companies have invested more than $600 million in building medical marijuana facilities. Arcila maintains that Colombia can produce cannabis products at lower prices than competitors due to affordable land, relatively low wages and an abundance of skilled farm hands who cut their teeth in Colombia's booming flower business. As an emerging venture it's unclear how the medical marijuana business will play out.

A finales de este año, Colombia podría estar realizando su primera exportación comercial de marihuana medicinal, después de dos años de haberse aprobado la regulación para el cultivo de este producto. Esto marcará un hito para esta industria, que más pronto que tarde apunta a estar en el top de las exportaciones del país, según empresarios del sector. En 2016 se aprobó la Ley 1787 sobre el acceso al uso médico y científico del cannabis y sus derivados, pero solo fue reglamentada en abril del 2017 con el decreto 613. Desde entonces, en el país se han concedido 331 licencias para producir marihuana medicinal. Si bien el total de licencias no significa que todas las personas o empresas ya estén produciendo cannabis medicinal, sí da una idea del interés que tiene la industria.