Global Ganja Report

The federal bureaucracy is starting to catch up with the law, following passage of the ground-breaking 2018 Farm Bill. The US Patent Office has issued guidelines for trademarks on CBD products, while the Agriculture Department is preparing to recognize intellectual property in hemp varieties.

A new report by the British think-tank Prohibition Partners foresees a $5.8 billion cannabis market in Asia by 2024—if the tentative seeds of liberalization now witnessed across the continent in fact bear fruit.

China's ambition to get in on the "cannabis boom," providing hemp for the global CBD market, is now making international headlines. But marijuana is more harshly proscribed in China than just about any other country in the world, and the People's Republic continues to execute thousands every year for drug crimes.

A new law in Georgia will allow the production of cannabis for medical purposes. The measure gives teeth to a formalistic 2015 law that legalized patient use of low-THC cannabis oil, but still inhibited actual access. Now the Peach State is poised to develop a cannabis business sector.

Idaho is considering legislation that would raise the number of signatures needed to get an initiative on the ballot—in an apparent bid to undercut a medical marijuana legalization effort. Local activists with the Idaho Cannabis Coalition are saying the law would be "tyranny."

The news that CBD products will be arriving at Walgreens and CVS drugstore chains can be seen as further progress for the normalization of cannabis. But it is also a further indication of corporate control of the new cannabis economy.

The conventional wisdom—and certainly the impression made by much media and advertising—is that CBD is legal pursuant to the federal Farm Bill enacted late last year. As is often the case, however, there are some devils in the details.

FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb has suddenly announced that he is stepping down, leaving lots of unfinished business—including the status of CBD under the agency's regs. Biotech stocks are taking a tumble on the news, while tobacco is bullish and cannabis is mixed.