A grassroots effort to decriminalise cannabis in Finland has taken a step forward this week, with a citizen’s initiative exceeding the required 50,000 signatures to submit it to parliament.
Rather than legalise cannabis, the initiative proposes decriminalisation which would discharge the penalties for using cannabis; owning a small amount of it for personal use; and growing a few plants at home.
The cannabis industry hit a series of important milestones recently, but none bigger than Canada's becoming the first Western developed nation to legalize recreational uses of pot. The highly anticipated event had marijuana companies giddy with excitement, while investors drooled over the enticing prospects the Canadian market offered. But one year after the fact, optimism has largely subsided, as cannabis companies have not performed nearly as well as expected.
While the Canadian cannabis market has had some hiccups and the U.S. market continues to face legal hurdles, the rest of the world, and particularly Europe, is starting to emerge with fast-growing potential, officials at three globally engaged cannabis companies said Tuesday.
SAN FRANCISCO — At a restaurant meeting in California a few years ago, Brad Hirsch and one of his law clients gathered over a meal with two potential business partners: Andrey Kukushkin and Andrey Muraviev, an investor who had flown in from Russia.
Almost three years after the first medical marijuana dispensary opened in Puerto Rico, the medical cannabis industry is blossoming into a fertile enterprise, generating a monthly average of $4 million in sales, despite a few setbacks.
Since its inception until last August, sales and services reported to the government amount to $128 million, with businesses paying $13.9 million for the sales and use tax (IVU by its Spanish acronym), according to the Treasury Department. So far this year, tax revenues from medical marijuana have increased by 127.5 percent.
On Oct. 17, 2019, a number of Mexican Senate committees unveiled draft legislation that would make our neighbor to the south the third country worldwide, after Uruguay and Canada, to legalize recreational marijuana. As reported by Canamo Mexico and Marijuana Moment, the 74 article, 42-page draft is similar to a bill proposed last year by Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero, who was then serving as a senator.
The Australian Senate has passed a bill, which calls for an assessment of barriers in patient access to medical Cannabis. The inquiry, tabled by the Greens, will assess the regulatory and financial barriers surrounding the sector.
Senator Richard Di Natale, leader of the Greens, called for the inquiry last week. However, it has received opposition from the coalition government. Australia is governed by a coalition between two political parties – the Liberal Party and the National Party of Australia, with the Greens representing an opposition party.
The ‘Germany Cannabis Report’ from Prohibition Partners also states that within a few years that number will have risen to one million patients. And, it estimates the total German cannabis market will be worth €16.2 billion by 2028, with the medicinal cannabis market estimated to be worth €7.7 billion by the same time.
This comes as Canadian firm Aphria, one of the few from that country to be currently showing a profit, says that by next year Germany will be contributing almost half its revenues.
In a first quarter results announcement Aphria said with 2020 revenue projections estimated at $700 million, its ‘German distribution business will represent slightly more than half of the total net revenue’.
Daragh Anglim, Managing Director Prohibition Partners, says in the introduction to the report, released in mid-October, that the rapid growth of the German market ‘is unprecedented in Europe’.
Adding: “Major change has followed across the continent but Germany remains one of the most open, promising and exciting markets in the region.”
The report highlights the supply problems facing the German market which is currently reliant on imports from Canada, Holland, Portugal and Australia. In an effort to combat this production licences were granted earlier this year, and of the 13 lots, Aphria and Aurora secured five, and Demecan received the remaining three lots.
Each lot allows the holder to grow 200 kilograms per year for a four-year period. And the report adds: “The reality is that the German tendered facilities are not going to meet the domestic medical cannabis quantity demand.”
It says patients requesting medicinal cannabis are being supported by a robust public health insurance regime, which covers 90% of the population. The monthly allowance 100 gramme is generous and the ‘insurance companies cover all cannabis treatments and do not specify which conditions are covered’.
Medicinal cannabis in Germany is very expensive, however, with an average price to patients of between €20 and €25 per gram for flower. In the Netherlands, medical cannabis is sold to patients for approximately €7 per gram, says the report.
Ever since Canada became the first major country to legalize marijuana for adults a year ago, other nations have been paying attention.
The small South American nation of Uruguay was the first to legalize marijuana for adults. New Zealand, Luxembourg and Mexico are among those that have looked to Canada for guidance or lessons, while Russia has chastised it for its “barefaced” flouting of international anti-drug treaties.
Here’s a look at how Canada’s experiment is playing out internationally and where the next attempts at legalization are coming:
States continue to flout federal prohibition and legalize marijuana within their borders, arguing that the nation’s war on pot has drained law enforcement resources, had a disparate impact on minorities and failed to curb the drug’s popularity.
Thirty-three states and Washington, D.C., have now legalized cannabis for medical or recreational use, with Michigan and Illinois the most recent of 11 states to OK recreational sales.
Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives, with significant bipartisan support, passed a bill that would grant legal marijuana businesses access to banking while sheltering financial institutions from prosecution for handling marijuana-linked money. That would clear up a serious headache for the industry. Many pot businesses have had to conduct sales and pay vendors or taxes in cash, making them robbery targets and also making it harder to detect theft, tax evasion and money laundering.
Advocates say the vote was a sign the U.S., long the world’s leading proponent of the drug war, is ready for comprehensive cannabis reform.
The small nation of about 615,000 people has decriminalized possession of small amounts of the drug, and since January it has allowed medical use. Now it is aiming to become the first country in Europe to legalize and regulate recreational sales to adults, a development that could lead to broader cannabis regulation in the European Union.
The government has announced that it intends to legalize sales, with Health Minister Etienne Schneider recently telling the Euronews television network that the country’s cannabis legislation will be “inspired by the Canadian model.” Officials estimate that it will take about two years before legal sales begin.
While Schneider said Luxembourg’s legalization won’t force the hand of other EU nations, he said he intended to speak with counterparts in Germany, France and Belgium, the countries that border Luxembourg, and encourage them to explore the possibility of regulating the drug. In the meantime, Schneider said, Luxembourg will respect their prohibitions by limiting sales to Luxembourg residents.
Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled last year that the government’s ban on the personal use of marijuana was unconstitutional, the culmination of a series of rulings against prohibition since 2015. That’s helped put Mexico on a path toward full legalization. Before he was even sworn in, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent emissaries to Canada to discuss its approach to cannabis.
Things are moving quickly now, with the ruling party’s Senate leader saying the chamber intends to vote on a new legalization measure by the end of this month, following dozens of forums in which politicians, advocates and voters have worked out what a regulated system might look like.
“The importance of Canada having regulated is that it broke the taboo on an international level in a way that Uruguay did not,” said Zara Snapp, a drug policy reform advocate in Mexico City. “For us, what it taught us is there is a path, and that path is possible without there being any apocalyptic sanctions from international bodies.”
That said, after severe drug-war violence, Mexico’s legalization is not likely to mirror Canada’s, where a few massive corporations have dominated production and more artisanal growers have largely been shut out. For example, lawmakers are considering giving greater licensing privileges to indigenous groups, she said.
“We need it to have a way bigger impact than just tax revenue or stock exchange values,” Snapp said. “The things that indicate success in other jurisdictions are not going to be the same indicators of success for us.”
New Zealand will hold a referendum next year on whether to legalize and regulate the adult use of marijuana — the first country to put legalization to a nationwide vote. Officials are still hammering out the exact language, but in a speech last month Justice Minister Andrew Little said the measure would include a minimum purchase and use age of 20; a ban on using the drug in public; limits on home growing, marketing and advertising; a public education program; and licensing requirements for the entire supply chain.
“The approach we are taking is that in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum, it will be necessary to have a regime that affords maximum control, so that the obvious risks can be minimized,” Little told a drug policy symposium last month.
Whether the vote will be binding is a matter of dispute. The three parties that make up New Zealand’s governing coalition have vowed to honor it, but legislation would be required to effect legalization, and the center-right party National has not made clear whether it will support the bill.
Advocates have expressed concern about social justice in New Zealand’s legalization efforts as well, suggesting that its model could strike a balance between Uruguay, where access to cannabis is tightly controlled at a small number of pharmacies, and the more commercial approach taken by some Canadian provinces and U.S. states.
Canada’s legalization hasn’t been uniformly well received. Russia’s representative to the international Commission on Narcotic Drugs lamented the “barefaced” and “blatant violation by Canada of its international obligations” under anti-drug treaties.
“There exists real danger that some other countries may follow the example set by Canada, which would lead to the erosion and even dismantling of the whole international legal foundation of our fight against narcotic drugs,” Mikhail Ulyanov said.
As recently as this month, Russia’s mission to the UN tweeted: ”#Legalization of narcotic drugs, including cannabis, for recreational purposes constitutes a grave violation of the international law.”
But Russia may have ulterior motives in criticizing Canada, given what many world leaders consider to be its own flouting of international law in annexing Crimea, among other issues.
“Russia has its reasons for trying to call out a country like Canada on its commitment to international rule of law,” said John Walsh, who monitors global drug policy with the advocacy group Washington Office on Latin America. “They delight in being able to say Canada is athwart its obligations. But I don’t think Russia’s bluster is going to keep other countries from moving forward.”
Prevailing attitudes in Ireland still hold cannabis as a dangerous substance, in contrast to the support of strictly-controlled medicinal marijuana.
Despite being known as “The Emerald Isle,” cannabis remains illegal for recreational use in Ireland, while medicinal use has only recently been legalized and approved for specific conditions as a “last resort” treatment. Prevailing attitudes in Ireland still consider the marijuana plant as dangerous, in contrast to the support of strictly-controlled medical cannabis. Nonetheless, personal possession and consumption is treated as a minor offense. But could the Irish be softening their stance on cannabis and be in the early stages of legalization?
Cannabis has been considered an illegal substance in Ireland since 1934, although today the police in Ireland have wide discretion in the enforcement of marijuana possession laws. In 1996, cannabis was made an unscheduled drug, allowing for penalties less harsh than for other substances on the illicit market.
Hemp and CBD, however, are legal in Ireland, and similar to other markets, the CBD rush is happening in Erie as well; one industry expert estimates that CBD could create 80,000 jobs and revitalize moribund rural economies. The cultivation of the cannabis plant for hemp and CBD is strictly controlled, can not be grown alongside public roads or in public view, and cultivators are subject to Garda (police) vetting.
Like CBD and hemp, medical marijuana is legal but strictly regulated, with a five-year pilot program recently signed into law and expected to go into effect soon. The new law allows doctors to prescribe cannabis to their patients to treat specific symptoms arising from multiple sclerosis, chemotherapy, and epilepsy, and only when other methods to abate conditions have proved ineffective. The new program also allows for importation of cannabis, with eyes towards domestic sourcing. In some cases, the cost of cannabis would be covered by the patient’s drug plan.
Like in many western nations where cannabis remains prohibited but largely tolerated, cannabis is not overly difficult to obtain, although its recreational use is more taboo than in Canada, and much of the US and Western Europe. While medicinal marijuana was still under consideration, a group of Irish physicians penned an open letter to the Irish Times warning that the allowing of medicinal use would lead to the legalization of recreational cannabis, characterizing medical marijuana as a “Trojan Horse.”
There seems to be little to suggest Ireland will be legalizing recreational marijuana soon, but a curious legal loophole exists within Irish law; cannabis seeds are legal to sell, buy, and possess, for collecting purposes. Germinating and cultivating cannabis from those same seeds remains illegal however.
