Global Ganja Report

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.

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.

Another dispensary is raided by police in Toronto—the latest in a string of such busts in the city over the past months, with some outlets even shut down. It's an irony that this crackdown comes as Canada is in its final countdown to legalization, and opens questions about whether there will be a place for independent dispensaries and small growers under the imminent new regulation regime.

Oakland-based cannabis industry research firm ArcView Group has released a new study, ambitiously entitled "The Road Map to a $57 Billion Worldwide Market." It provides a sweeping overview of recent progress and future prospects for legal or medical herb across the globe. But it also warns that, due to continued legal restrictions and bureaucratic overstretch, the market is in most areas bottlenecked from achieving its potential.

A United Nations study brings back the surprise finding that the world's biggest producer of legal cannabis is Great Britain. The answer to this seeming anomaly lies in one UK-based multinational corporation with industrial-scale grow operations for production of pharmaceuticals.

In a sure sign of changing times, the first cannabis-industry business has been listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange—raising clear questions about how long prohibition can hang on in the face of a burgeoning economic sector. Toronto-based medical marijuana producer Cronos Group won approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to become the first cannabis company listed on NASDAQ, New York City's second biggest stock market, Bloomberg reported Feb. 26.

Colombia, long notorious as a violence-torn drug war dystopia, is now set to become a global leader in legal production of cannabis for the medical market. Vancouver-based International Cannabis Corp, also known as ICC Labs, is the latest foreign company to win a production license in the South American country. ICC Labs says it intends to cultivate "non-psychoactive" cannabis plants containing the cannabinoid CBD to produce various medicinal products for domestic and international distribution.

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.