C<\/span>hina has a cultural connection with cannabis that reaches back more than 3,000 years, so it\u2019s less than shocking that the country is positioning itself to reap economic rewards from the rising global tide of decriminalization.<\/p>\n But the South China Morning Post reports<\/a> that one of the biggest advantages China has in the budding international cannabis market has much more recent historical roots \u2014 research done into hemp medicine and textiles during the 1970s to support China\u2019s war with Vietnam.<\/p>\n From the Post:<\/p>\n The military needed to develop a fabric that could keep soldiers clean and dry in Vietnam\u2019s humidity, and cannabis hemp offered the fiber that breathed and was antibacterial. Other studies explored the plant\u2019s use as a drug in field hospitals.<\/em><\/p>\n As a result of that research, more than half of the world\u2019s 600-plus patents related to the plant are now held in China, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization. This has prompted concerns in the Western pharmaceutical industry that the Chinese government or Chinese firms might take advantage of the patent barriers.<\/em><\/p>\n Although China outlawed the possession of cannabis in 1985 when it joined the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, law enforcement there has largely ignored the continued cultivation of hemp by farmers. The country also has certain regions \u2014 notably the\u00a0Heilongjiang \u00a0province near the border with Russia \u2014 where farmers are legally licensed to produce industrial hemp.<\/p>\n In those regions, farmers can profit from the sale of every part of the hemp plant; stems go to textile factories to produce fabric, leaves go to pharmaceutical companies to make medicine and the seeds are sold to food manufacturers for use in making oils, beverages and snack foods.<\/p>\n And the crop is profitable for farmers, who say the result is \u201cpure profit\u201d \u2014 more than 10,000 yuan for every hectare of hemp \u2014 compared to crops like corn, which provide much lower profit margins.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also worth noting that the\u00a0Heilongjiang \u00a0province \u2014 like many of China\u2019s hemp producing regions \u2014 is not home to an especially hospitable climate. Here again, the country\u2019s extensive research into the plant provides an advantage.<\/p>\n From the Post:<\/p>\n Over the decades, researchers developed various hybrid species that not just survived but thrived in China\u2019s disparate environments, from the Arctic conditions in Heilongjiang, to Inner Mongolia\u2019s Gobi Desert to the subtropics of Yunnan.<\/em><\/p>\n But what does all this mean for cannabis in America \u2014 the biggest importer of Chinese hemp?<\/p>\n Dr. Luc C. Duchesne is a biochemistry expert with 30 years of science and business experience. He believes that China\u2019s extensive portfolio of cannabis patents, but also the\u00a0nature<\/em> of those patents \u2014 herbal, whole-plant preparations vs. \u201creductionist\u201d synthesizing of key cannabinoids \u2014 could hold the keys to Chinese dominance<\/a> in a global medical cannabis market.<\/p>\n \u201cThe predominance of Chinese patents suggests that pharmaceutical sciences are evolving quickly in China, outpacing western capabilities. Uneven country ownership of intellectual property suggests possible global imbalance,\u201d Duchensne wrote. \u201cIn the Chinese patents cannabis is used in herbal preparations, whereas in the western patents emphasis is on the properties of one or more of the 415 cannabinoid[s].\u201d<\/p>\n Duchense also points to the history of acupuncture in California, which went from outlawed to ubiquitous<\/a> practically overnight, as an illustration of how rapidly patient paradigms about their healing can change. He sees the social movement towards more holistic approaches to medicine in the United States overlapping with the growing acceptance of cannabis medicine in mainstream culture; his conclusion?<\/p>\n \u201cThe writing is on the wall:\u00a0westernized Chinese traditional medicine is coming to a dispensary near you.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Maybe so: At the start of the year, the first online CBD product store and distributor opened<\/a> with its headquarters in Shanghai.<\/p>\n The U.S. has a booming hemp\u00a0product<\/em> industry, but many of those products are produced with imported hemp from Canada or China because of legal restrictions on domestic cultivation. American hemp farms finally got back in the game<\/a> in 2014, but they have a long way to go in establishing themselves as a major supplier domestically, never mind a global market force like China or Canada.<\/p>\n Putting aside the economic considerations, thousands of Americans are already consuming Chinese hemp oil \u2014 whether they realize it or not. \u00a0What potential health risk is there for cannabis consumers using \u201c50 state-legal\u201d CBD products?<\/p>\n As with most things, it depends who you ask: Unsurprisingly, companies that produce CBD products from hemp oil say it\u2019s totally the same<\/a>\u00a0as cannabis-derived oil; others say not only is that untrue, hemp oil could have safety issues and isn\u2019t even federally legal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Project CBD, a California-based nonprofit that promotes CBD research and medicine, has expressed concerns<\/a> about the use of hemp oil for CBD extraction, pointing to issues with bioaccumulation by industrial hemp.<\/p>\n From Project CBD:<\/p>\n Industrial hemp typically contains far less cannabidiol than CBD-rich cannabis strains so a huge amount of industrial hemp is required to extract a small amount of CBD. This raises the risk of contaminants as hemp is a \u201cbio-accumulator\u201d\u2014meaning the plant naturally draws toxins from the soil.<\/em><\/p>\n Additionally, the project raised concerns about the efficacy of CBD-only products, pointing to research around the \u201centourage effect<\/a>\u201d of cannabis in treating illness.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear if CBD products made with Chinese hemp oil are any riskier than American-produced industrial hemp CBD. But given the rapidly growing opportunity for economic growth around the industrial hemp industry, as well as the need to more closely control and regulate the safety of CBD products domestically, it would seem wise for the United States to seriously expand its hemp industry.<\/p>\n TELL US,\u00a0<\/strong>do you use CBD-only products? Do they work for you?<\/p>\n The post The Rise (& Risk?) of Chinese Hemp<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
China is the number one supplier of industrial hemp to the United States, meaning that \u201c50 state-legal CBD\u201d product you\u2019re taking was possibly produced with Chinese hemp oil. What does China\u2019s market dominance in hemp mean for the growing U.S. hemp industry and consumer safety? China has a cultural connectionContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,136,696,80,170,296,321],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19087"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19088,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19087\/revisions\/19088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: The Rise (& Risk?) of Chinese Hemp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"