The scope of the crisis now facing China is truly staggering, and clearly poses a threat to the country\u2019s generation-long thrust of prodigious economic growth and that includes one industry that has close ties to cannabis, vaping.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By the Chinese\u00a0government\u2019s own count<\/a>\u00a0as of Feb. 17, a total of 72,436 people are confirmed to be suffering from the COVID-19 coronavirus, while 1,868 people have died.\u00a0The Lunar New Year holiday, originally set to run over a long weekend at the end of January, was extended more than two weeks in a bid to contain the virus. Now, factories are\u00a0starting to come to life<\/a>\u00a0again, but with so much of the population under lockdown, at severely\u00a0diminished capacity<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Moody\u2019s Investors Service<\/a>\u00a0on Feb. 18\u00a0lowered its growth forecast<\/a>\u00a0for China from 5.8% to 5.2% for 2020, predicting \u201ca severe but short-lived economic impact, with knock-on effects for economies across the region.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Moody\u2019s cited supply chain disruptions due to slow-down of industry as a key factor threatening the economy. And the global cannabis business definitely stands to be impacted by such disruptions.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to a Feb. 14\u00a0analysis by Reed Smith<\/a>, the Pittsburgh-based global law firm: \u201cThe outbreak of a new strain of the coronavirus has impacted in one way or another many businesses across the United States and around the world. Cannabis- and vaping-related businesses are no exception. According to recent media reports, those businesses have experienced \u2014 or may experience \u2014 interruption in their supply chains as a result of the viral outbreak.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Almost all the world\u2019s vaping hardware is produced in southern China\u2019s factory zones. That includes the cartridges that hold the cannabis extract or other vaping products, the batteries that heat them, and the actual vaporizers.<\/p>\n Local inventories have already felt the pinch in places as far away as the Canadian prairies.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to get your hands on the 510 batteries manufactured in China right now because of the coronavirus,\u201d Mack Andrews, owner of the local\u00a0Aylmer Nelson Cannabis\u00a0store, told the\u00a0Calgary Herald<\/a>\u00a0on Feb. 16. \u201cSuppliers are having a hard time meeting demand.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrews said his store ordered a sizable stock of the batteries before the crisis struck China, but was quick to add: \u201cI\u2019m not sure every store would have had that luck.\u201d<\/p>\n And this comes at a particularly bad time, as Alberta Gaming Liquor & Cannabis (AGLC) just\u00a0approved<\/a>\u00a0the sale of cannabis vape pens on Feb. 7. All eyes in the industry are watching how sales and supply roll out in the western province.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019ll be some stores able to sell the cartridges but won\u2019t have batteries,\u201d predicted Andrews.<\/p>\n And provincial regulators agree. \u201cWe expect retailers will be able to begin ordering products as early as this coming week and there may be limited product from the onset,\u201d AGLC representative Angelle Sasseville said in seemingly guarded comments to\u00a0CBC News<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Use of extracts, including for vaping, became legal for the adult-use market under\u00a0Health Canada regulations<\/a>\u00a0that took effect last year. Sales of vape products began in Ontario in December 2019, but there the\u00a0online store<\/a> run by the provincial government maintains a monopoly. In Alberta, they are to be available in privately owned brick-and-mortar dispensaries, making the province a key testing ground for what is being called Canada\u2019s \u201cCannabis 2.0<\/a>\u201d economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n An irony is\u00a0China\u2019s ambition to get in on the \u201ccannabis boom,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0providing hemp for the global CBD market \u2014 despite the fact that marijuana is more harshly proscribed in China than just about any other country in the world. The People\u2019s Republic continues to execute thousands every year for drug crimes, including for cannabis.\u00a0<\/p>\n The southern province of Yunnan and the northern province of Heilongjiang are the country\u2019s two top hemp producers, with Yunnan especially a seat of China\u2019s burgeoning cannabis industry. These are both outside the zone most impacted by the virus, in central China \u2014 with the very epicenter notoriously being Wuhan in Hubei province. As a\u00a0New York Times page<\/a>\u00a0tracking the outbreak notes, Yunnan and Heilongjiang have seen comparatively few cases, and are also not under the harsh lockdown conditions being imposed in central and eastern China.<\/p>\n However, the impacted zone largely overlaps with China\u2019s industrial heartland. So some of the cannabis operations in Yunnan and Heilongjiang are controlled by companies based in impacted areas. For instance, large operations in Yunnan are under\u00a0Conba Group<\/a>, a pharmaceutical company based in Zhejiang province, which has been very heavily impacted both by the virus itself and the lockdown measures.<\/p>\n China\u2019s share in the global CBD market may not be significant enough for the crisis in the country to have an impact there. However, CBD producers in North America and elsewhere relying on Chinese-grown hemp could also mean impacts on the industry.<\/p>\n Before the current health crisis, there were\u00a0fears that Trump\u2019s trade war<\/a>\u00a0with China could hurt the global cannabis industry. The first sign of a thaw in the dispute that has sent tariffs soaring came on Jan. 15, as Washington and Beijing\u00a0signed an initial pact<\/a>\u00a0to regulate trade relations. That this came just a week before the lockdown was imposed in Wuhan is perhaps the bitterest irony of all.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, how concerned are you about the Coronavirus?<\/p>\n The post Coronavirus Outbreak Impacts Cannabis Industry<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The scope of the crisis now facing China is truly staggering, and clearly poses a threat to the country\u2019s generation-long thrust of prodigious economic growth and that includes one industry that has close ties to cannabis, vaping.\u00a0 By the Chinese\u00a0government\u2019s own count\u00a0as of Feb. 17, a total of 72,436 peopleContinue 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":[50,696,170],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41352"}],"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=41352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41353,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41352\/revisions\/41353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Vapes Especially Vulnerable\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
China\u2019s Cannabis Contradiction\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Coronavirus Outbreak Impacts Cannabis Industry<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"