Global Ganja Report

Something of a corporate scramble is underway to secure patents for the various curative properties of CBD, and associated products and procedures. Pharmaceutical firms see a windfall, but some activists raise concerns about the creeping privatization of a cannabinoid that should belong to the genetic and intellectual commons of the human race. How realistic are fears about the imminent arrival of "corporate cannabis"?

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 big multi-agency "reclamation" effort on national forest lands in the Emerald Triangle points again to the serious environmental impacts of outlaw cannabis cultivation. Will this be the last gasp of this sort of thing now that California has legalized?

California's Gov. Jerry Brown has unveiled a special investigative force to go after unregistered cannabis growers. This is certainly bad news for the many growers who have failed to register because they consider the taxes and regulations burdensome. In the face of disappointing tax revenues from legal cannabis, is the state using the stick of enforcement rather than the carrot of lower taxes and more favorable regulations to bring more growers in from the shadows?

Five months into legal cannabis in the Golden State, the temporary licenses issued by authorities to get things off the ground are running out. But the full annual licenses are still being held up by several factors—including the failure of local authorities to approve cannabis operations, and implementation of a "track-and-trace" system to monitor marijuana from seed to sale. 

New Mexico is the latest state to announce that it will play host to the biggest legal cannabis grow operation in the United States. But other claims to that title over the past years have still not panned out, and a facility in Arizona now occupies the number one slot. And as various states vie for the honor, Canada is far in the lead of its southern neighbor.

After Jeff Sessions issued a memo urging prosecutors to seek the death penalty for those "dealing in extremely large quantities of drugs," even mainstream media outlets began raising the alarm that this could actually be used against large-scale legal cannabis cultivators in places like California. Is this threat is at all realistic?

With foreign capital pouring into Colombia's newly legalized cannabis sector, industry leaders foresee the country becoming the world leader in production and exports—a new "Saudi Arabia of cannabis." However, traditional peasant producers fear they will not have access to the legal market—but will continue to face repression and eradication. The newly formed National Coordinator of Coca, Poppy and Marijuana Cultivators is demanding a place for campesino producers in the new legal cannabis economy, and a halt to forced eradication efforts.