There is ample evidence that irresponsibleoutdoor cultivation can also be environmentally destructive, leading some to argue that indoor cultivation is better for the environment because it ostensibly uses less land (thanks to higher yields) and less water (thanks to less evaporation). But in reality, if best practices are followed, the opposite is true. Moreover, the vastly lower startup and operating costs for outdoor farms also lessen the steep inequities that nonwhite owners of businesses face in obtaining financing. Indoor growers insist that their methods are essential in order to avoid the weather risks tolerated by other farmers, achieve uniformly attractive products, boost potency, maximize profits, and enhance security. There are strong counterarguments in each case.

Policy changes over the past five years or so have dramatically reshaped the global cannabis market. Not only has there been an unprecedented boom in medical markets, but following policy shifts in several jurisdictions a growing number of countries are also preparing for legal regulation of non-medical use. Such moves look set to bring a clear range of benefits in terms of health and human rights. As this groundbreaking Report, highlights, however, there are also serious concerns about the unfolding market dynamics.

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The not-for-profit model adopted by Malta for drug policy reform is resonating across other countries. The emphasis on a harm reduction approach, including considerations for social justice and the negative consequences caused by the ‘war on drugs', will remain key to ensuring cannabis reform promotes the well-being of society and protects the most vulnerable. Transnational Institute Program Director Martin Jelsma spoke about the relationship between drug policy reform in consumer countries, such as countries in the EU, and socio-economic development in producing countries predominantly in the global south, such as Morocco.

On June 26, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released its annual report on the illicit drug trade. The headline is that despite millions of people killed, incarcerated and impoverished, and trillions of dollars spent on the global drug war, people are using more illicit drugs than ever. The UNODC accompanied its research with a booklet focusing on the effects of “environmental crime”—meaning, damage inflicted on ecosystems by organised drug trafficking groups—in the Amazon rainforest. Last year, the agency released its first specific report on “environmental crime,” and we are seeing increasingly high-profile figures speaking out about it. However, experts are warning that this latest UNODC report, along with much of the discourse around these issues, fundamentally misses the point in very dangerous ways.

Excoriated by some policymakers and by the legal cannabis industry as an unfair competitor and as a demonstration that legalization isn’t working, the illicit market remains popular with consumers for reasons of price, quality, and product availability. According to a survey conducted by Vikiana Clement, the executive director of the Cannabis Education Task Force at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College, so-called “illicit” cannabis operators actually performed better than their corporate competition on several key metrics, including the “triple-bottom line” of social and environmental responsibility as well as pure profit.

Done mostly indoors in Washington, pot production often uses hospital-intensity lamps, air conditioning, dehumidifiers, fans and carbon-dioxide generators to stimulate plants and boost their potency. The carbon footprint of producing 2.2 pounds of marijuana indoors is equivalent to driving across country seven times, according to a peer-reviewed study. Yet almost no one is pushing for cleaner sun-grown weed as state officials make rules for legal growing operations. Pot production often uses hospital-intensity lamps, air conditioning, dehumidifiers, fans and carbon-dioxide generators to stimulate plants and boost their potency. The power-hungry crops rival data centers or server farms in intense use of electricity.

“L’augmentation rapide de la culture illicite de cannabis dans le Rif au cours des dernières décennies, ainsi que les mauvaises pratiques de conservation des sols, ont fait des ravages sur les forêts déjà menacées et les écosystèmes fragiles du Rif (déforestation, érosion des sols, épuisement de l’eau)”, déclare Tom Blickman, connaisseur de la région, chargé d’un projet senior au « Transnational insitute » à Amsterdam. Ce dernier fait partie des nombreux experts-intervenants lors du webinaire organisé jeudi 25 mars par l’IUCN (Union internationale pour la conservation de la nature) et l’AMCDD (Alliance marocaine pour le climat et le développement durable), intitulé « légalisation du cannabis: quel impact sur la biodiversité et les ressources ? ».

Et si le nouveau modèle de développement intégrait la légalisation du cannabis ? Ce jeudi 23 juillet, la CSMD a organisé un atelier de travail avec des chercheurs et des experts sur la question. Conscient que l’approche répressive envers les cultivateurs de cannabis n’aboutit à rien, le panel a axé sa réflexion sur les moyens de mieux exploiter les vertus thérapeutiques et récréatives de la plante. “Face à cette problématique, tout a été essayé et rien n’a marché. On ne peut pas aller à contre-courant. Il faut désormais faire un choix”, résume Camelia Benaskour, consultante en stratégie d’entreprise. (Lire aussi: Adapter la culture du kif à l’environnement, défi pour un nouveau modèle de développement)

More than nine months after California voted to legalize recreational marijuana, only a small share of the tens of thousands of cannabis farmers in Northern California have joined the system, according to law enforcement officers and cannabis growers. Despite the promise of a legal marketplace, many growers are staying in the shadows, casting doubt on the promise of a billion-dollar tax windfall for the state and a smooth switch to a regulated market. At the same time, environmental damage and crime associated with illegal cannabis businesses remain entrenched in the state despite legalization, law enforcement officials say.

Noxious dumps in “drug pits”is one of many new ways  drug gangs in the Netherlands and Belgium are disposing of the toxic waste created in one of the world’s largest MDMA and amphetamine producing regions. While drug users may be aware of the price of an ecstasy pill and its psychoactive effects, the collateral damage on the environment caused by this huge illicit, and therefore unregulated, industry is not understood. Drug gangs in the Netherlands and Belgium, which have started setting up equally toxic meth labs and cocaine extraction labs on top of well-established MDMA and speed production industries, are increasingly resorting to dumping chemicals in more remote, pristine nature reserves and forests in order to escape detection. 

This policy briefing discusses whether or not the aim of reducing cannabis cultivation is realistic or beneficial for Morocco, what it would actually mean for the major production area the Rif – one of the poorest, most densely populated and environmentally fragile regions in the country – and what that could imply for meaningful sustainable development. The briefing will give some historical background, discuss developments in the cannabis market, and highlight environmental and social consequences as well as the recent debate about regulation in Morocco and about European policies.

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Measures to dispose of laughing glass cylinders have turned the flasks into a potentially deadly hazard, waste processing industry body NVRD has warned. The problem started when the use of the popular party drug laughing gas, or nitrous oxide, was banned at the start of this year without any system for disposing of the canisters, NVRD director Wendy de Wild told the AD. A deposit system, where empty cylinders could be handed in to providers, was abandoned when the ban came into effect, resulting in dozens of potentially dangerous explosions as cylinders were thrown out with the household waste.

La política de drogas “Sembrando Vida Desterramos el Narcotráfico” 2023-2033 que presenta el presidente Gustavo Petro en Cauca ha recibido comentarios positivos y también críticas de distintos sectores por las inconsistencias y vacíos detectados. En comparación con los enfoques punitivos predominantes en el pasado, la política formulada reconoce explícitamente que la “guerra contra las drogas” fracasó a nivel mundial, lo que exige transformar sustancialmente las premisas que criminalizan a los pequeños productores de plantas prohibidas, a los consumidores de drogas y mantienen en un segundo plano los enfoques de secuencia debida y derechos humanos también incluidos en instrumentos de Naciones Unidas. (En contexto: Los detalles del borrador de la política de drogas de Petro, que costaría 18 billones de pesos)

Across the world, the state of environmental stress is unprecedented. As scholarship and activism on ‘environmental justice’ points out, poorer and marginalised communities face particular exposure to environmental harms. This holds particularly true for populations in the global South. The role of illicit drugs in relation to these environmental stresses is an underexplored terrain. Yet, as this report will argue, drugs, as well as the policy responses to them, are an environmental issue.

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Proposition 64, California’s 2016 landmark cannabis initiative, sold voters on the promise a legal market would cripple the drug’s outlaw trade, with its associated violence and environmental wreckage. Instead, the law triggered a surge in illegal cannabis on a scale California has never before witnessed. Criminal enterprises operate with near impunity, leasing private land and rapidly building out complexes of as many as 100 greenhouses. Police are overwhelmed, able to raid only a fraction of the farms, and even those are often back in business in days. The raids rip out plants and snare low-wage laborers while those responsible, some operating with money from overseas, remain untouched by the law, hidden behind straw buyers and fake names on leases. Labor exploitation is common, and conditions are sometimes lethal.

Despite the lack of state support, more and more farmers in the UK are turning to hemp production for its economic and environmental benefits. It's legal for them to sell a variety of hemp-made products, like milk and seed powers, to supermarkets and other businesses. In the right conditions, hemp absorbs more CO2 than it takes to cultivate - sequestering nine to 15 tonnes of CO2 per hectare. That’s almost twice as much as a forest of the same size, according to a Cambridge University researcher. Could it be the next big carbon sucker? As well as absorbing carbon, “hemp regenerates the soil it grows in, cleaning it of heavy metals and toxins left behind from other crops,” explains Tommy Corbyn, co-founder of the National Hemp Service.

The cannabis industry can build a better and regenerative culture, rather than falling into the same old tired and destructive human and corporate patterns of extractive companies. We can create a diverse industry from the ground up. The federal and provincial governments can incentivize and support the creation of small sustainable environmentally friendly farms. In a transparent legal market, consumers can purchase cannabis aligned with their values, whatever they may be. We can promote gender parity and inclusiveness in the boardroom, and foster equity in the licencing process with buy-in from local, provincial and federal governments. Let’s create fair trade standards that will help farmers to not just survive but thrive, and give back to our communities economically, in the spirit of good stewardship.

Cannabis may look green, but the environmental metaphor mostly stops there. Virginia—the latest state to approach full legalization—and the 46 others that have implemented some degree of liberalization all share the dubious honor of doing so with little or no consideration of environmental consequences, particularly those stemming from the prodigious energy use associated with indoor cultivation. In one mind-boggling illustration of this, a new study says that Colorado’s cannabis industry emits more CO₂ than its coal industry. Once the domain of barefoot gardeners, millions of pounds of cannabis—the nation’s highest-value cash crop—are now produced each year in Walmart-sized, windowless, energy-intensive factory farms. More than 40 percent of producers grow exclusively indoors.

In November 2018, the UN System CEB adopted the ‘UN system common position supporting the implementation of the international drug control policy through effective inter-agency collaboration’, expressing the shared drug policy principles of all UN organisations and committing them to speak with one voice. The CEB is the highest-level coordination forum of the UN system, convening biannual meetings of the heads of all UN agencies, programmes and related institutions, chaired by the UN Secretary General. 

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