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.

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."

There is a growing consensus among hemp advocates that the 0.3% limit for THC content is arbitrary and is holding back the industry. And the man widely credited with arriving at this limit himself agrees.

The Contested Border
"It seems like it is pretty much pulled out of air. We ought to be looking to science to determine an appropriate threshold, determine the level at which cannabis is psychoactive and make that the standard."

This typical view is offered by attorney Patrick Goggin of Hoban Law Group, the international firm specializing in cannabis. Goggin is one of the industry's legal heavy-hitters, and has particular experience in the question of the contested border between hemp and marijuana.

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.

In a strange paradox, Turkey's increasingly authoritarian President Erdogan has announced that he wants to expand legal cannabis cultivation in the country. His speech unveiling the proposal even portrayed the plant's prohibition as imposed by Western powers to undermine Turkish agriculture—appealing to his traditional Islamist base, with otherwise conservative instincts.

A House bill to legalize cannabis, removing it from the Controlled Substances Act and treating it like alcohol, is wryly dubbed HR 420. It isn't the first such bill in Congress—but with the recent change in House leadership, this time it may actually stand a chance of passing.