Global Ganja Report

A Vancouver police raid on a "harm reduction center" that was selling cannabis products raises uneasy questions about the availability of cannabis in British Columbia when Canadian legalization officially hits in next month. With only one retail outfit likely to be licensed province-wide and authorities pledging a crackdown on the old dispensaries, the ironic reality may be cannabis will initially be harder to get in BC once it is "legal."

Lesotho is a land-locked mountain kingdom in Africa that few in the outside world have heard of, but it punches above its weight where cannabis production is concerned. "Dagga" has long been a pillar of its economy. Now it is attracting international investment to grow cannabis for the global medical market. With cannabis just decriminalized in South Africa—which borders Lesotho on all sides, and is closely integrated with the kingdom—this is a promising sign for the entire region.

Police in Canada are actually anticipating more cannabis-related arrests after legalization, due to expected increases in driving while high and other such offenses. Meanwhile, Trudeau's promised expungement of prior cannabis-related criminal records does not appear to be imminent. And US immigration authorities say they will treat Canadians involved in the legal industry as "traffickers."

A new product is being plugged as containing CBD derived from humulus—that is, hops, the buds used as a bittering agent in beer. Some of the media hype has implied that this novel origin gets around the US federal stricture on the cannabinoid. But experts raise a skeptical eyebrow at the claim of hops-derived CBD. And in any event, the federal stricture is on the cannabinoid itself, regardless of how it is derived. 

With Canada on a final one-month countdown to legal cannabis, the country's provinces are adopting widely varying regulation regimes, creating a "crazy quilt" policy patchwork. While Ontario and Quebec are opting for provincial government monopolies on retail sales, Alberta and Saskatchewan have embraced a private model, sparking a flood of canna-capital into these western provinces.

With US stock exchanges still almost entirely closed to cannabis businesses, the stateside industry is increasingly seeking access to the Canadian exchanges in order to secure investment. Taking over publicly traded Canadian firms through reverse mergers has emerged as the critical tactic in this endeavor.

A British Columbia firm which is one of Canada's leading licensed producers of medical marijuana has entered a partnership with the national subsidiary of Sandoz, a global leader in the pharmaceutical industry. The deal is being hailed as a milestone that signals the arrival of cannabis in the corporate economy.

On the heels of December's British Columbia high court decision striking down mandatory minimum prison terms for cannabis defendants as "cruel and unusual punishment" in contravention of Canada's constitution, the provincial court system has now just applied similar principles to use of solitary confinement.