Global Ganja Report

Hemp’s Curious Cultural Trajectory

Now that hemp has finally arrived at its long-sought status as a legal crop and commodity, there is a sense of inevitability to its deviation from the utopian vision that animated the advocates who fought for it a generation ago.

A tension that has always existed between two currents in the subculture of hemp advocacy is increasingly weighted toward the more mundane—activists versus entrepreneurs, idealism versus pragmatism, agrarianism versus agribusiness. And finally the original paradigm of a crop with multitudinous uses as “food, fuel and fiber,” holding the potential to solve humanity’s ecological crisis, versus the hegemony of CBD.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) last month issued its World Drug Report 2019—its 22nd annual survey of production, trafficking and eradication and enforcement efforts around the world. In addition to providing figures on cocaine and opiates, the report seeks to quantify the amount of cannabis cultivated in each producer country.

Cannabis industry leaders have announced certification standards to promote corporate responsibility. The move appears to be prompted by some embarrassing scandals in the young industry. Activists are meanwhile raising more far-reaching demands for drug war "reparations." 

Harborside, the San Francisco Bay Area's flagship cannabis dispensary chain, is going public on the Canadian stock exchange. Founder and chairman emeritus of the company, Steve DeAngelo, speaks with Cannabis Now about what this means for Harborside's future and the fast-evolving cannabis industry.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won praise from activists when she decried a white-dominated legal cannabis industry. As if to prove her point, the man she ousted in her 2018 Congressional run, Joe Crowley, is now joining an investment firm linked to the cannabis industry.

Northern Swan, a New York investment house specializing in the cannabis industry, just announced the appointment to two prominent political figures to its advisory board.

Latin America is at the forefront of the global wave of cannabis law reform, according to a new report from a DC-based industry analyst. New Frontier Data sees a $9.8 billion market in the region, with big expansion potential for both exports and serving local consumption. 

Colombia is facing a strange contradiction—foreign capital is pouring in for the legalized cannabis sector, yet the new right-wing President Iván Duque is returning to the hardline "drug war" policies that the country has moved away from in recent years. This means not only a resumption of glyphosate spraying to wipe out illegal crops in the countryside, but an overturn of the former decriminalization policy. Street arrests for cannabis use and possession have soared since Duque issued his recrim decree.

Cannabis has become a global industry, but obviously it is still limited by legal restrictions—and the fact that these increasingly vary from country to country further complicates things. Where is commercial cannabis going and where is it coming from? And how is this likely to change as the international atmosphere further liberalizes?