Cannabis is deeply rooted in the continent of Asia, where a cultural, medicinal and spiritual relationship with the plant stretches back into remote antiquity. The harsh prohibition regimes in many Asian countries are likely to be pried open over the next years, allowing for fast growth of a regulated cannabis market.<\/p>\n
These are the optimistic findings of\u00a0The Asian Cannabis Repor<\/a>t<\/a>, newly released by U.K.-based international cannabis industry analysts Prohibition Partners<\/a> \u2014 an ironic name, as the consultancy\u2019s mission is to monitor and encourage the growth of the sector as it emerges into the incipient post-prohibition world.<\/p>\n The report notes significant progress, especially in the nations of Southeast Asia, traditionally some of the most conservative on the continent. In Thailand, the legalization of medical cannabis, approved<\/a>\u00a0by the country\u2019s national legislature last year, took effect this February by royal decree (making the law official).\u00a0<\/p>\n Also in February, Malaysia\u2019s health ministry stated that it would consider allowing the use of medical cannabis. This reconsideration was prompted by last year\u2019s controversy after a young Malaysian man was sentenced to death by hanging for providing cannabis oil to patients. Following a global outcry over this injustice, he was taken off death row. The Malaysian government pledged to abolish the death penalty and has now openly broached a reform of its cannabis law. <\/p>\n And February also saw a positive development in Singapore, where the government announced its intention to allow the legal sale and use of pharmaceutical products containing cannabinoids.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cannabis was largely legal and used in traditional medicines across the region until the 1930s, and prohibitionist policies were adopted at the behest of the United Nations and world powers. Now the international consensus is changing; the report notes the\u00a0World Health Organization<\/a>\u2018s recent\u00a0call for cannabis to be rescheduled<\/a> under the relevant international treaties. \u201cThis marks a significant U-turn on a doctrine that has been codified in international and local laws for the past 60 years and could be the key to fast-tracking [legalization] of Asia\u2019s medicinal cannabis market.\u201d<\/p>\n The Philippines represent a strange case, with a medical marijuana bill pending even as President Rodrigo Duterte pursues his draconian and murderous<\/a>\u00a0anti-drug crackdown. On this sensitive question, the report could have used a closer edit. It implies on page 16 that the Philippines\u2019 Compassionate Medical Cannabis Act has already passed. On page 31, it clarifies that the law remains pending in the country\u2019s legislature. In fact, it\u00a0passed in the lower house<\/a>\u00a0of the Philippine Congress in February, but Duterte now\u00a0says he opposes the bill<\/a>, reversing his previous stance.<\/p>\n The Philippines and Cambodia alike are given credit for having abolished the death penalty, which has been widely used for drug crimes in Southeast Asian nations. But the report doesn\u2019t mention that Duterte is now\u00a0hoping to restore the death penalty<\/a>, which was\u00a0abolished in 2006<\/a>, long before he took office.\u00a0In fact, this has become a key question in the Philippines\u2019 imminent mid-term elections, which could see the country diving deeper still into drug war dystopia.<\/p>\n Also given perhaps too much credit is Myanmar. Text excerpted in a big pull-quote hails its effort to \u201cadopt an evidence-based focus that addresses the needs of people and their health by reducing the negative effects of drug production, trafficking and use.\u201d This verbiage seems to be lifted nearly verbatim from a February 2018\u00a0press release<\/a> by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). In fact, the proposals for a more tolerant approach to drug enforcement in Myanmar have so far come to little<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another strange contradiction is China, the economic giant of the region. The People\u2019s Republic has established \u201cglobal dominance in hemp,\u201d producing nearly half the world\u2019s supply \u2014 and increasingly for CBD production rather than traditional industrial purposes. China is the well-established world leader in those traditional industrial applications as the largest global exporter of hemp paper and textiles. <\/p>\n Here too, there is some confusion. We\u2019re told on page 35 that the \u201cbulk\u201d of Chinese hemp cultivation is in Shandong and Yunnan provinces. Yet\u00a0most sources indicate<\/a>\u00a0that the two major hemp-producing provinces are Yunnan and Heilongjiang. In fact, the report says as much on page 52, contradicting itself. Legalization of hemp appears to have been phased in at the provincial level since Yunnan led the way a decade ago. A national law regulating the industry only seems to have been instated with\u00a0the anti-drug bill passed by the People\u2019s Congress in May 2017.\u00a0<\/p>\n The report\u2019s contention that China \u201ccurrently produces over half of the world\u2019s cannabis\u201d will raise eyebrows among those aware that the\u00a0United Kingdom is\u00a0generally held<\/a>\u00a0to be the world\u2019s top producer, thanks to some powerful pharmaceutical interests there. This touches on the\u00a0nomenclature dispute<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the report eschews the word \u201cmarijuana\u201d in favor the less stigmatized scientific term \u201ccannabis.\u201d But this becomes problematic when a distinction needs to be drawn between low-THC hemp and dried flower with a psychoactive effect. China is the world\u2019s top hemp producer, while the U.K. is the number-one producer of legal \u201cmarijuana\u201d (to use the increasingly taboo, but more accurate, term).<\/p>\n Additionally, \u00a0China holds 309 of the current 606 international cannabis-related patents that have been filed, including methods of administering the drug, according to data from the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO<\/a>). Companies like the Yunnan Industrial Cannabis Sativa Co and Beijing-based\u00a0Hemp Investment Group<\/a> have global designs on the CBD market. Yet, as the report notes, without particular emphasis, herbaceous cannabis is so harshly proscribed in China that possession can still land you on death row. <\/p>\n The report portrays India, which legalized hemp cultivation in 1985, as poised to challenge China\u2019s hegemony in the industry. Although hemp cultivation is legal only for use in the textile industry, the sector is booming in the northern states of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. Certainly, competition in hemp production would be a far healthier outlet for the mutual rivalry between India and China than the current\u00a0nuclear arms race<\/a>\u00a0between the two Asian giants.\u00a0<\/p>\n Regarding tolerance of herbaceous cannabis, the report rather overstates things, writing that \u201cbhang is legal in India, and, owing to its integral role in spiritual practices, [criminalizing] the use of bhang would be almost impossible.\u201d In fact, use of \u201cbhang\u201d (marijuana) is only tolerated at\u00a0certain religious festivals<\/a>.<\/p>\n Listed as \u201cnot ready for change\u201d are the Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), and the Arab nations of Western Asia. <\/p>\n The report\u00a0sidesteps the\u00a0strange misconceptions<\/a>\u00a0about North Korea having a tolerant cannabis policy: \u201cThe current legality of medicinal and recreational cannabis is unknown in North Korea. With such little information available, we have taken a conservative approach to market [liberalization].\u201d<\/p>\n South Korea, however, has\u00a0moved to permit<\/a>\u00a0pharmaceutical products made with cannabinoids, as has Japan. A Korean Cannabinoid Association has emerged to advocate for broader use.<\/p>\n Other such activist efforts are noted, such as Thailand\u2019s\u00a0Highland Network<\/a>\u00a0and India\u2019s Great Legalisation Movement.\u00a0The\u00a0Malaysian Consumers Association<\/a>\u00a0has also stepped forward in support of legalizing medical cannabis.<\/p>\n Prohibition Partners projects that the Asian medical cannabis market could be worth an estimated $5.8 billion by 2024 \u2014 \u201cassuming that it is [legalized] in the countries profiled in this report within this timeframe.\u201d Even with all the hopeful signs we now see, which would have been unthinkable just a year or two ago, that is still a rather important caveat.\u00a0<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, where do you see the global cannabis market expanding next?<\/p>\n The post Analysis Optimistic About Progress in the Asian Cannabis Market<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Cannabis is deeply rooted in the continent of Asia, where a cultural, medicinal and spiritual relationship with the plant stretches back into remote antiquity. The harsh prohibition regimes in many Asian countries are likely to be pried open over the next years, allowing for fast growth of a regulated cannabisContinue 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":[6591,50,136,696,3711,296,1973,9953,6004,9954,9860,81,5272,420,9955,9956,9957,1173],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35265"}],"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=35265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35266,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35265\/revisions\/35266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Signs of Hope in Southeast Asia<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Fudging the Philippines<\/strong><\/h4>\n
China and India in Cannabis Race?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Analysis Optimistic About Progress in the Asian Cannabis Market<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"