Global Ganja Report

As Canada prepares to legalize cannabis next year, the country has seen several recent conferences and expositions on how industry and society will manage the transition. The latest, the Grow Up Conference and Expo, opens Oct. 6 at the Niagara Falls Scotiabank Convention Centre in Ontario, and will feature over 100 speakers from a variety of specialties, including doctors and lawyers—with a focus on cultivation.

Following a favorable court ruling earlier this year, cannabis advocates and growers are making a big push for a legal industry in South Africa. A first regional industry meeting was held Sept. 20 at Cato Ridge outside the port city of Durban, bringing together producers under the banner of the Cannabis Development Council of South Africa.

The networking group CannaGather held its fifth confab at lower Manhattan's Galvanize venue Sept. 28, bringing together some 200 entrepreneurs, investors, press and activists from throughout the New York metropolitan area. Inspired by the New York tech industry meet-ups of the dot-com boom in the late '90s, CannaGather hopes to similarly connect people in a burgeoning industry and help spur its growth.

It's an ominous sign that even as California is on a countdown to cannabis legalization, to take effect in January, big pot raids continue in the Emerald Triangle. The most recent to make local news came on Aug. 22, when the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office Drug Enforcement Unit launched a three-day operation in the Conklin Creek area of Petrolia.

Pollution from outlaw cannabis grows deep in California's national forests is far worse than previously thought, and has turned thousands of acres into virtual toxic waste dumps. That's the sobering assessment of an Aug. 6 Reuters report on the mounting ecological impacts of outdoor cultivation in the Golden State, which accounts for upwards of 90% of illegal marijuana production nationwide.

Hemp Business Journal reports that products infused with CBD oil are leading growth in hermp-derived products sold in the United States generally, which in 2016 had a collective retail value of $688 million. This figure represents a five year 22% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Joining more traditional products such as shelled seed, protein powder, soaps and lotions, are growing lines of medicinal preparations such as CBD edibles. Hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) accounted for $130 million in sales last year.

The first decisive step toward the liberalized atmosphere for cannabis across much of the country was quite arguably San Francisco's Proposition P of 1991—the popular initiative that protected medical marijuana use in the city. So it's heartwarming that the City by the Bay has just established an Office of Cannabis to oversee legal sales. 

Three of the Balkan states to emerge from the ashes of Yugoslavia a generation ago are now among the first countries in the ex-communist world to move toward embrace of medical marijuana.