The People\u2019s Republic of China is well-positioned to dominate the global market in the therapeutic cannabinoid CBD, and its business leaders and scientific establishment are hoping to make good on this, despite a deeply entrenched political taboo against cannabis.<\/p>\n
China is the top exporter of industrial hemp to the United States, as well as providing an impressive third of the total global supply of hemp. This means there is a high probability that the CBD product used by stateside consumers is made\u00a0with Chinese hemp oil<\/a>. And China\u2019s industry leaders are now looking to foreign sources for actual THC-laden cannabis as well.<\/p>\n A delegation of Chinese entrepreneurs and agricultural researchers last week arrived in Israel to meet with local counterparts working in the field of cannabis. On the agenda is a tour of top figures in Israeli academia and industry involved in developing new products and medicinal applications for the plant. The delegation was reported on by\u00a0CTech<\/a>, Israel\u2019s tech-sector financial news site and also picked up\u00a0Caixin<\/a>, the Beijing-based business media giant.<\/p>\n The Chinese delegation intends to seek \u201cscientific collaborations\u201d in Israel, according to Ascher Shmulewitz, chair of\u00a0Therapix Biosciences Ltd<\/a>, a company based outside Tel Aviv in the process of developing cannabinoid-based pharmaceutical products. Shmulewitz is accompanying the Chinese researchers during their tour.<\/p>\n The delegation comes just after the Israeli Knesset\u00a0approved export of cannabis<\/a>\u00a0and medical marijuana products, although the measure still awaits the approval of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n China itself shows no sign of following Israel in allowing production of high-THC cannabis for research or medicinal purposes.\u00a0But research with that procured elsewhere is underway.<\/p>\n \u201cMedicalization is already happening in China and the Chinese government is encouraging medical cannabis research,\u201d said Saul Kaye, founder and CEO of\u00a0iCAN<\/a>, a company that hopes to cash in on the new export opportunities. \u201cChina has a rich botanical medical history and cannabis was historically used as a Chinese herb,\u201d Kaye told\u00a0Nikkei Asian Review<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the forefront of China\u2019s emerging cannabis industry is\u00a0CannAcubed<\/a>, flagship firm of the Industrial Cannabis Eco-Park in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan province. CannAcubed has recently started producing CBD for export to Europe, along with its line of\u00a0hemp textiles and garments.<\/p>\n But while operations are based in China\u2019s hemp cultivation heartland of Yunnan, the company\u2019s corporate headquarters are in Singapore, and there appears to be much foreign money involved. \u201cIt\u2019s a very exciting time right now in this sector, and the industry is moving at lightning speed,\u201d CannAcubed co-founder and CEO Glenn Davies told\u00a0Asia Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n He admitted, however, that \u201craising capital for a cannabis company headquartered in Singapore and [with] operations in China comes with its challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2028<\/strong>But in a continued and deepening contradiction,\u00a0China is\u00a0hailed as an emerging \u201ccannabis superpower<\/a>\u201d even as its government runs perhaps the world\u2019s harshest anti-drug police state. Chinese consulates even\u00a0issued a warning<\/a>\u00a0to Chinese nationals living in Canada not to indulge in cannabis after the stuff became officially legal there in October.<\/p>\n China leads the world far and away in use of the death penalty, including for drug offenses. This reality is currently making headlines due to the outrageous case of Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, a Canadian who was initially sentenced to 15 years in prison for drug trafficking by a court in the northeast city of Dalian, and then ordered to stand retrial as prosecutors said that his sentencing had been too light. In a one-day retrail on Jan. 14, he was\u00a0given a death sentence<\/a>. Schellenberg has always maintained that he was an innocent tourist and was framed.<\/p>\n As the\u00a0New York Times<\/a>\u00a0reports, Schellenberg\u2019s retrail is widely seen as retribution for Canada\u2019s December arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of the Chinese technology company\u00a0Huawei<\/a>. Wanzhou was arrested at the request of U.S. authorities, who accuse her of helping the company evade sanctions against Iran.<\/p>\n But while foreigners who face the firing squad in China win global headlines, thousands of Chinese every year suffer this fate in anonymity.<\/p>\n China last year revived the grotesque spectacle\u00a0of drug convicts sentenced to death before hundreds of public viewers in stadiums as part of the official campaign recognizing the UN\u2019s\u00a0International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking<\/a>, June 26. Two accused men\u00a0received the verdict<\/a>\u00a0in a sports stadium in Haikou, capital of the southern island province of Hainan, before being swiftly put to death. Many of the hundreds of spectators were young students bused in for the lugubrious ritual, wearing their school uniforms, according to a\u00a0video<\/a> released by official media.<\/p>\n The men sentenced in Haikao were convicted on charges concerning methamphetamines or\u00a0\u201cmagu<\/em>,\u201c<\/em> a mix of meth and caffeine. The unfortunate tourist Schellenberg was also convicted on meth charges. But you can still face execution for cannabis in China, too.\u00a0According to a report in Hong Kong\u2019s\u00a0South China Morning Post<\/a>, the quantities sufficient to land you before a firing squad are 10 kilograms of resin (hashish) or 150 kilograms of herbaceous cannabis.<\/p>\n And if more people are executed for meth than cannabis, that is only because the prior is far more readily available than the latter, which is itself testimony to the absurdly counter-productive nature of China\u2019s prohibition regime.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, do you think China\u2019s global business ambitions will drive change in its domestic drug policy?<\/p>\n The post China\u2019s Cannabis Sector Is Primed to Expand, Amid Harsh Anti-Drug Policies<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The People\u2019s Republic of China is well-positioned to dominate the global market in the therapeutic cannabinoid CBD, and its business leaders and scientific establishment are hoping to make good on this, despite a deeply entrenched political taboo against cannabis. China is the top exporter of industrial hemp to the UnitedContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3454,50,696,3711,170,6899,133],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32116"}],"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\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32117,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32116\/revisions\/32117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}China Sends Cannabis Delegation to Israel<\/h4>\n
\u2018Industrial Cannabis Eco-Park\u2019 in Yunnan<\/h4>\n
China\u2019s Cannabis Contradiction Continues<\/h4>\n
\n
\nRead More: China\u2019s Cannabis Sector Is Primed to Expand, Amid Harsh Anti-Drug Policies<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"