A new course about medical cannabis will be offered starting next year by the Office of the Non-Formal and Informal Education.

A team of experts on medical cannabis is working to create content for the course, said Assoc Prof Phatchari Sisang, an expert in research and development at  Srinakharinwirot University.

"Marijuana and Hemp Studies for Smart Use" will be worth 3 credits and take a total of 120 hours to complete, said Assoc Prof Phatchari, who is on the working team.

Designed by the Office of the Non-Formal and Informal Education together with Chaopraya Abhaiphubejhr Hospital, the course will consist of seven parts:

1: Reasons Why We Need to Learn about Marijuana and Hemp (10 hours); 2: Marijuana and Hemp as Medicinal Plants (20 hours); 3: Dangers and Benefits of Marijuana and Hemp (15 hours); 4: Laws about Marijuana and Hemp (15 hours); 5: Marijuana and Hemp in Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine (20 hours); 6: Marijuana and Hemp in Modern Medicine (20 hours), and 7: How to Use Marijuana and Hemp as Medicines To Their Fullest Benefits.

"This course is not about growing marijuana. Instead, it will provide knowledge about the pros and cons of marijuana and how to use it appropriately," Assoc Prof Phatchari said.

Suphaphon Pitiphon, the president of the Thai traditional medicine and herbs department at Chaopraya Abhaiphubejhr Hospital, said the course will give basic and necessary knowledge about marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Sangkhom Thopurin, an expert on educational institution management,  who is a member of the team designing the course, said it would be better to put in place a formal study course on marijuana and hemp than to let enthusiasts struggle to find information on their own from elsewhere.

Companies vying to be the biggest cannabis producer in America or Canada are wasting their time and suffering from a crippling lack of vision. The real play is to make a bid to become the worldwide leader in global cannabis exports — like firms in Jamaica and Lesotho as well as Canada are attempting to do — and the window of time to get in is closing fast, according to one entrepreneur with clear-cut plans to curb that market.

Though recreational cannabis is now available in two countries, medical marijuana is legal in about 50 and not every country produces adequate supply to fulfill domestic demand. Over the long-term, the thinking goes, cannabis will become like any other agricultural commodity and production will shift to the locale where costs are lowest. But so far, the limited export game has been dominated by a few players, most of whom are either occupying a very limited lane or banking on the future.

An example of the former, Bedrocan in the Netherlands, produces cannabis solely for the government authority, which then exports most of it to Germany. Bophelo Bioscience and Wellness, a startup recently acquired by a Canadian-firm and based in tiny Lesotho, the first country in Africa to legalize cannabis, is an example of the latter. Somewhere else is a company like Fotmer Life Sciences in Uruguay, which is hoping to supplant both.

The world’s most popular illicit drug, cannabis boasts at least 263 million users worldwide, according to a New Frontier Data estimate, who in turn consume $340 billion worth annually, most of which is still on the underground market. At the moment, with so few legal companies producing cannabis and even fewer exporting, it’s a seller’s market. That state of play — flux, uncertainty, opportunity — will last only about another five years, said Jordan Lewis, an American entrepreneur who is Fotmer’s CEO.

Fotmer was in the news much last week as the company prepared its first shipment of export cannabis: 22 pounds, headed for medical cannabis patients in Australia. After that, Fotmer hopes to start competing with Bedrocan and begin shipping cannabis flower and oil to Germany, with up to 220 pounds or so per month headed out of the country to global customers, as he told Reuters.

Most of that will go to Europe, which “right now represents the single largest market in the next five years,” Lewis told Supplychainbrain.com.

The window for producers to charge high prices, before a reliable global supply floods the market, is now through 2024, he added, with high THC oils and plants to preserve their value longer than CBD products.

The modest first shipment is a tiny fraction of the company’s capacity. Fotmer currently has government approval to produce up to 10 tons of flower and 5 tons of oil, said Lewis — who added that he’s asking the Uruguayan government to allow him to grow 15 times that, in order to curb that global market. (He’s also shopping for a “large strategic partner” to provide the estimated $60 million of start-up capital needed to grow all that cannabis.)

If Lewis is right and producers in other companies join in, Fotmer may be well positioned to remain competitive, an outlook shared by other analysts. As New Frontier Data noted in a global market analysis released earlier this year, South America is considered a future hub for cannabis production thanks to an agreeable climate and low labor costs.

If countries decide that domestic suppliers are preferable and throw up tariffs, Lewis’s play could disappear. Or perhaps the best praxis is to play off of the incredible hype around the cannabis industry and get acquired. The point is that in a world obsessed with the next big thing, cannabis is very quickly approaching critical mass, and entrepreneurs are slowly catching on.

It seems like cannabidiol (CBD) is popping up in everything these days, from workout gear to skincare. Suddenly, the cannabinoid is being pitched to various populations as a near-magic cure-all and pet owners are no exception.

The psychoactive but non-intoxicating hemp-derived compound has been administered for illnesses such as pain, arthritis, and anxiety in cats and dogs — but with very little scientific evidence backing CBD for pets, many veterinarians are wary of the treatment.

But that’s starting to change. A new study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine (UPSVM) is partnering with Denver-based cannabis producer Dixie Brands, Inc. to launch the first scientific study of the effectiveness of a cannabinoid therapy administered to relieve pain and other symptoms of canine joint-immobility.

Kimberly Agnello, an associate professor of surgery at UPSVM, is the study’s lead investigator.

“There are many different products that are sold out there and we really don’t know which ones are helpful, how much to give, or even how safe it is to administer it at different dosages,” Agnello told Philly Mag.

“We want to validate whether this is actually helpful and if it’s something we should be recommending. Up until now, there haven’t been too many great studies showing that CBD is beneficial in helping to relieve pain in people or dogs with arthritis.”

Agnello’s team will study dogs suffering from osteoarthritis in order to establish which CBD treatments result in better patient outcomes. The dogs will be divided into three groups — one which will be administered a Dixie Brands affiliate-developed CBD formula, one that will be administered CBD only, and one that will receive a placebo.

Agnello says that the study will be the largest-scale canine/CBD trial to date, and may be the first significant double-blind trial for dogs (which means neither researchers or dog parents know which canines have received which medication or placebo), although it isn’t the first time she and her researchers have tried to study how CBD affects domestic animals.

“We actually tried to do a study using CBD years ago but due to regulations around having it here and the fact that it was listed as a Schedule I substance, it was very difficult for us to do the study,” she said.

“Because while it doesn’t contain THC, it is developed from the same marijuana plant,” she explained. “Now that those regulations have become less strict, it has been easier for us to do the study.”

Agnello believes that the study could also help humans with arthritis, as most simulate arthritis in rodents — but dogs who have been diagnosed with arthritis have more similarities, physically and with regards to lifestyle, to humans.

“Dogs truly develop arthritis in a similar way to humans and they experience similar chronic pain, she said. “Unlike a mouse that lives in a lab, dogs live with us and are exposed to the same toxins in food, in the air, and in the environment. So, they’re not only similar in the development of disease but they have a similar lifestyle to us. We see a lot of the studies we do as translational studies because the information could also be useful for future studies in people.”

In states like California, Colorado, and Washington, where cannabis cultivation is now legal, the industry is saving many small locales that are on the verge of becoming ghost towns.

After decades of strict prohibition, cannabis now proving to be quite a commodity, rescuing these small towns from bankruptcy and multi-million dollar deficits. Abandoned buildings, dilapidated streets and parks, and overall feelings of financial despair are a thing of past for these areas that are cashing in the green rush.

One such area is the hot, dusty town of Desert Hot Springs, CA, the first city in Southern California to legalize large-scale cannabis cultivation. Situated right off the I-10 freeway near the eastern edge of Joshua Tree National Park, Desert Hot Springs has potential, but unfortunately lacks the upscale resort reputation of neighboring areas, like Palm Springs. The median household income is just over $33,000 annually, significantly less than the state average of $71,000.

Following a fiscal emergency, the city council voted to legalize medical cannabis dispensaries and cultivation. The result is a ripple effect economic benefits: construction and utility jobs, security jobs, positions for project managers (to resolve infrastructure issues for growers), a real estate boom, and of course employees directly involved in the dispensaries and cultivation. Desert Hot Springs is now home to the largest solar-powered cannabis growing and processing facility in the world.

But DHS isn’t the only California desert town expecting to see a surge of green in their barren landscapes. City Councilman John “Bug” Woodard used the cannabis industry to dig the town of Adelanto (San Bernardino County) out of their 2.6 million dollar debt. Cathedral City and the city of Coachella have also started to designate certain areas for cannabis growing. So far, these desert towns have received a total of around 100 applications for growers and dispensaries 

Further north up the West Coast is the town of Raymond, WA. A once thriving epicenter of timber mills was there, but that all changed in recent years when most of the world went digital and the timber industry came to a screeching halt. Raymond became known as an “out of the way” town with dismal employment opportunities.

The decision to legalize cannabis cultivation came fairly easily to lawmakers, and within one year Pacific County generated $5 million in revenue from the industry. Cannabis profits have well-surpassed income from any other industry in the area, including cattle ranching. According to BestPlaces.net Raymond’s job growth is expected to be at 34.17% in the next ten years.

The revitalizing effects of the green rush are far reaching, from the west coast out to colorful Colorado. The towns of Trinidad and DeBuque were all but withering away after the collapse of their local fuel and mining industries when they turned to the cannabis industry to fill the financial void. In all, the state of Colorado ended the year quite nicely with nearly $996 million in revenue from recreational cannabis sales. A good portion of that money is intended to go towards schools and citywide renovations

Challenges Faced

One thing everyone can agree on is that the revenue and benefits coming from the cannabis industry are bountiful. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some challenges on the horizon. With the recent legalization of the industry in some states, two of the main obstacles to overcome are tax related issues and problems with infrastructure.

Like with all large-scale business, there is the potential for greed and corruption to permeate, This often comes in the form of frequently increasing taxes. Many growers and dispensary owners are already dealing with high taxes and minimal tax breaks compared to other businesses.

Thanks to Section 280E of the tax code, businesses that are involved in some way with prohibited controlled substances are not entitled to the same tax breaks as other businesses. Some growers and dispensary owners have been subjected to tax rates of up to 70 percent. That’s more than double the standard rate of 30 percent that other businesses pay.

Another immediate issue is the need for infrastructure. Luckily, that’s something that will most likely be resolved must faster than corporate greed. However, building large-scale structures with all the resources needed to grow cannabis is no easy task. They would need to take many things into consideration including climate control, conserving water, and conserving energy. This can be an especially daunting task in the harsh desert landscape of California, but it’s not exactly cheap to have a climate controlled environment in places where it gets cold either, like Washington and Colorado.

Not only that, but getting utilities to some of these places could be a challenge in and of itself. These are small towns with small electrical grids, definitely not large enough to handle the energy demands of multiple, large-scale grow operations.

According to Robert Laffoon-Villegas, spokesman for Southern California Edison, said: “the utility expects that some growers’ power needs could be so large that it would be like adding a small city to the system.” To be able to provide the necessary power will most likely require more energy facilities to be built.

There will always be challenges to overcome, that’s true to be said about anything in life. But the cannabis industry has so much potential and room to develop. Plus, numbers don’t lie, cannabis means money! And there are a lot of small towns throughout the United States that could benefit greatly from the financial surplus that the cannabis industry could provide for them.