Global Ganja Report

The global cannabis industry is increasingly dependent on factories in China's industrial zones—and fears being impacted by Trump's trade war with Beijing. Chinese pharmaceutical firms meanwhile explore potential applications of cannabis. Yet possession of herbaceous cannabis can land you before a firing squad in China. Human rights groups express alarm about the furious pace of executions in the People's Republic—outstripping the rest of the world combined. And drug offenses—including pot possession—top the country's capital crimes.

California health authorities dealt a blow to the burgeoning CBD business by banning preparations of the cannabinoid derived from industrial hemp rather than psychoactive cannabis. The diktat adds to the legal confusion around CBD, and highlights the need for greater clarity from the competent authorities at both the state and federal level.

In a fast and furious exchange of retaliatory tariffs, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping appear to have initiated a trade war this week. If Trump isn't careful, he could risk undermining the very domestic economic buoyancy that has helped sustain his popularity among his base. And the cannabis sector is particularly vulnerable, according to industry insiders.

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?

The seizure by federal agents of some 100 homes around Northern California supposedly used in grow operations financed by criminal networks based in China points to ongoing dilemmas in the state's contraband cannabis economy—which persists even in the wake of legalization.

In a lugubrious public spectacle, a Chinese court sentenced 10 people to death before a crowd of thousands at a stadium in the southern city of Lufeng Dec. 15. Of course, most were convicted of drug-related crimes, According to a harrowing report in South China Morning Post, they were summarily tried on the spot, and immediately taken away for execution. The grim ceremony kicked off a new anti-drug campaign in the People's Republic of China.

Is it really possible that Philippine President Rodirgo Duterte—who has unleashed a "war on drugs" that has now reached the point of mass murder, and used charges of narco-corruption to lock up his political opponents—is himself mixed up in the drug trade? With the Philippine Senate now launching multiple investigations into the drug-related violence, charges of involvement in the narco trade have actually reached some of Duterte's closest family members.

Cannabis seizures are rapidly escalating in Hong Kong—whether due to greater quantities on the market or stepped-up enforcement, or both. The city's South China Morning Post reports June 19 on a haul of 35 kilos in 136 baggies ready for sale, uncovered in a vehicle during a police raid on a car park. Three were arrested. Police estimated the street value of the load at HK$10 million (about US$1.3 million). As recently as May 27, the SCMP reported a police raid on an industrial building in the city's Tai Po district that netted 110 kilos, worth HK$19 million. (Obviously, the math is not adding up here, raising questions about how the Hong Kong cops arrive at their estimates.)