Amid an overall trend of progress for cannabis freedom, there are a few worrying tendencies that industry and activists alike will need to be vigilant about in 2020.<\/p>\n
These concern both the actual shape of the legal industry as it unfolds, and the dangers of a prohibitionist backlash against it. It looks likely that corporate cannabis will increase pressure on independent producers, while prohibitionists will try to leverage the vaping health scare for anti-cannabis propaganda. And the cannabis industry\u2019s own terminology may be actually adding to the confusion.<\/p>\n
The news that CBD products will be\u00a0arriving at Walgreens and CVS drugstores<\/a>\u00a0can be seen as further progress for the normalization of cannabis. But cannabis can also be subject to the same abuses as any other commodity in the legal economy \u2014 and the increasing elite corporate control of the plant is obvious.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite legal restrictions due to high-THC cannabis remaining illegal under U.S. federal law,\u00a0strains are being\u00a0patented<\/a>. Strains that were long a part of the genetic commons are at risk of being privatized. And independent growers using heirloom seed are at risk of being marginalized in the pricey niche market of \u201ccraft cannabis<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n This trend is\u00a0especially obvious in Canada<\/a>, where licensed producers are pushing out independent growers and home-growers. Dispensaries which had been operating under a legal \u201cgray zone\u201d in Toronto and Vancouver are being raided and shut down, supplanted by a smaller number of dispensaries licensed under the regulatory regime put in place with legalization last October. It\u2019s true that many \u201cgray-zone\u201d dispensaries have been re-opening, but authorities in Toronto recently took an unsubtle step to prevent this:\u00a0building big cement-brick barriers between<\/a>\u00a0the raided storefronts and the sidewalks. This is certainly not what we expected \u201clegalization\u201d to look like.<\/p>\n Under the Canadian regulations, \u201ccraft cannabis\u201d producers do have a place \u2014 but they must sell to one of the big licensed producers that serve as intermediaries to the retail outlets. This means they are effectively prohibited from acting as independent operators.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amid all this, two provinces have actually sought to outlaw home cultivation, essentially forcing consumers to buy corporate cannabis: Quebec and Manitoba. In Quebec, the ban was thankfully overturned by the provincial courts in September. But the one in Manitoba still stands. And in what seems almost like a revenge move, shortly after the overturn of the homegrown ban the Quebec government moved to\u00a0raise the legal age of cannabis consumption<\/a>\u00a0from 18 to 21. The new law is to take effect Jan. 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n While many activists and advocates anticipate legal cannabis coming to America soon, it\u2019s important that we look at Canada as a model and take steps to protect small farmers.<\/p>\n The vaping-related health scare, which has now\u00a0claimed some 50 lives<\/a>\u00a0across the United States, is obviously a very real and urgent concern. And it is just as obviously providing a ripe atmosphere for exploitation by anti-cannabis advocates that want to put the genie of legal cannabis back in the proverbial bottle \u2014 logic and rationality be damned.<\/p>\n A recent case in point is a\u00a0Philadelphia Inquirer<\/a>\u00a0article of Dec. 27, under the lurid headline, \u201cFor young users, marijuana can be a dangerous game.\u201d It states: \u201cIn this year\u2019s mysterious rash of vaping-related lung injuries\u2026 many involved vaping THC products. While the CDC has identified vitamin E acetate as \u2018a chemical of concern\u2019 in these cases, it\u2019s just one of many substances present in vaping oils and liquids. The CDC has said the mystery of these illnesses is far from solved and has recommended that people not use any THC-containing e-cigarette products.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet \u201cmarijuana\u201d is not an \u201ce-cigarette product,\u201d and it does not contain vitamin E acetate or any of the other unnamed \u201csubstances\u201d found in vaping oils and liquids. Contrary to what is implied by the headline, herbaceous cannabis flower is one of the safest ways to consume cannabis, particularly when it comes from a regulated dispensary and has been tested for pesticides, molds and other contaminants. Indeed, people are turning to illegal vape pens in states where cannabis prohibition still reigns\u00a0precisely because<\/em>\u00a0safely tested herbaceous flower is not available.<\/p>\n New York\u2019s Gov. Andrew Cuomo\u00a0contributed to the confusion<\/a>\u00a0in an embarrassing September interview with CNBC, in which he was doggedly questioned on whether the wave of vaping-related illness had made him reconsider pursuing cannabis legalization. \u201cNo,\u201d he replied \u2014 but quickly added that his administration is \u201cnot in favor of smoking marijuana,\u201d and that there are \u201cways to get THC without smoking marijuana.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet \u201csmoking marijuana\u201d (or vaping marijuana) is the\u00a0safer<\/em>\u00a0alternative to vaping extracts and especially to vaping from an illict-market vape-pen.<\/p>\n However, logic might win out in the end. Take Massachusetts: In September, Gov. Charlie Baker\u00a0announced that the state would ban the sale of flavored tobacco and vape products<\/a>. Cannabis advocates pushed back that there was nothing inherently dangerous in a cannabis vape, and in December, the state allowed the vape ban to end. The smart solution:\u00a0those cannabis vapes would have to pass additional testing<\/a>\u00a0to prove they did not contain vitamin E acetate.<\/p>\n The uproar over cannabis vapes brings us to another worrying problem facing the cannabis industry: the need for more education on what exactly \u201ccannabis\u201d means. \u00a0<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the terminology increasingly favored by the cannabis industry and advocacy community is also\u00a0contributing the confused intellectual climate<\/a>. Under the new dogma, use of the\u00a0word \u201cmarijuana\u201d is\u00a0increasingly verboten<\/a>, either because it harkens back to\u00a0the racism of Harry Anslinger<\/a>\u00a0or because it\u00a0helps aid the \u201cnormalization\u201d cause<\/a>\u00a0to refer to the plant by its scientific name. \u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the word \u201ccannabis\u201d is becoming a catch-all for any products derived from cannabis \u2014 including the extracts and oils in vape pens and including hemp products that contain less than 0.3% THC. As a means of eroding the stigma, this is obviously counter-productive \u2014 because it blurs the distinction between a cured flower and a refined extract, and the distinction between\u00a0a plant that is federally legal<\/a>\u00a0and one that isn\u2019t. It makes rhetorical booby-traps like the one Cuomo blundered into all the more effective.<\/p>\n If the word \u201cmarijuana\u201d is to be erased from our vocabulary, then there must be another one to denote dried and cured cannabis flower, typically that containing enough THC for a psychoactive effect.\u00a0Using the word \u201ccannabis\u201d in a sweeping and imprecise way thickens the cloud of obfuscation around the whole question, and ultimately abets the forces of cultural backlash.<\/p>\n In my opinion, rejecting the word \u201cmarijuana\u201d is in some ways a capitulation to the stigma \u2014 and a capitulation to racism, as that word is associated with the stigma precisely because it emphasizes the plant\u2019s Mexican roots in North America. Anti-Mexican xenophobia was deftly exploited in the prohibitionist propaganda campaign of the \u201cReefer Madness\u201d era in the 1930s. And given the current climate in this country, accepting the stigmatization of something (whether a word or a plant) because of its Mexican origins holds obvious political dangers.<\/p>\n In 2020, it might be time to say it loud: \u201cI smoke marijuana and I\u2019m proud!\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0what do you think will happen to cannabis in 2020?<\/p>\n The post 3 Worrying Cannabis Trends to Watch in 2020<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Amid an overall trend of progress for cannabis freedom, there are a few worrying tendencies that industry and activists alike will need to be vigilant about in 2020. These concern both the actual shape of the legal industry as it unfolds, and the dangers of a prohibitionist backlash against it.Continue 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":[34,50,4314,3920,296,81,5491,11900],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40343"}],"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=40343"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40344,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40343\/revisions\/40344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>The Prohibitionist Exploitation of the Vape Scare<\/strong><\/h4>\n
3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>The Ongoing Semantic Confusion\u00a0Between \u2018Cannabis\u2019 & \u2018Marijuana\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: 3 Worrying Cannabis Trends to Watch in 2020<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"