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Reprinted from the Denver Post Friday, December 28, 2018

Cannabis pushes into the financial, cultural mainstream

by Gillian Flaccus The Associated Press

PORTLAND, OREGON >> The past year was a 12-month champagne toast for the legal marijuana industry as the global market exploded.

Liberal California became the largest legal U.S. marketplace, conservative Utah and Oklahoma embraced medical marijuana, and the east coast got its first commercial pot shops. Canada ushered in broad legalization, and Mexico's Supreme Court set the stage for that country to follow.

U.S. drug regulators approved the first marijuana-based pharmaceutical to treat kids with a form of epilepsy, and billions of investment dollars poured into cannabis companies. Even Main stream brands like Coca-Cola said they are considering joining the party.

" I have been working on this for decades, and this was the year that the movement crested," said U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat working to overturn the federal ban on pot. "It's clear that this is all coming to a head."

With buzz building across the globe, the momentum will continue into 2019.
Luxembourg is poised to become the first European country to legalize recreational marijuana and South Africa is moving in that direction. Israel's Parliament approved a law allowing exports of medical marijuana. Thailand legalized medicinal use of marijuana, and other Southeastern Asian countries may follow South Korea's lead in legalizing cannabidiol, or CBD. It's a non-psychoactive compound found in marijuana and hemp plants and used for the treatment of certain medical problems."It's not just the U.S. now. It's spreading," said Ben Curren, CEO of Green Bits, a San Jose, Calif. company that develops software for marijuana retailers and businesses.

Curren's firm is one of many that blossomed as the industry grew. He started the company in 2014 with two friends. Now he has 85 employees, and the company's software processes $2.5 billion of sales transactions a year for more than 1,000 U.S. retail stores and dispensaries.

Green Bits raised $17 million in April 2018, pulling in money from investment firms including Snoop Dogg's Casa Verde Capital. Curren hopes to expand internationally by 2020. "A lot of the problem is keeping up with growth,: he said.
Legal marijuana was a $10.4 billion industry in the U.S. in 2008 with a quarter-million jobs devoted to the handling of marijuana plants, said Beau Whitney, vice president and senior economist at New Frontier Data, a leading cannabis market research and data analysis firm. There are many other jobs that don't involve direct work with the plants, but they are harder to quantify, Whitney said.
Investors poured $10 billion into cannabis in North America in 2018, twice what was invested in the past three years combined. North American market is expected to reach more than $16 billion in 2019.
"Investors are getting much savvier when it comes to this space because even just a couple of years ago, you'd throw money at it and hope that something would stick," he said. "But now investors are much more discerning."

Increasingly, U.S. lawmakers see that success and want it for their states.

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. states have legalized some form of medical marijuana.
Voters in November made Michigan the 10th state -- and first in the Midwest -- to legalize recreational marijuana. Governors in New York and New Jersey are pushing for a similar law in their states next year, and momentum for broad legalization is building in Pennsylvania and Illinois. "Let's legalize the adult use of recreational marijuana once and for all," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

The East Coast's first recreational pot shops opened in November in Massachusetts.
State lawmakers in Nebraska just formed a campaign committee to put a medical cannabis initiative to voters in 2020. Nebraska shares a state line with Colorado, one of the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana, and Iowa, which recently started a limited medical marijuana program.

With all its success, the U.S. marijuana industry continues to be undercut by a robust black market and federal law treats marijuana as a controlled substance like heroin.

At the start of the year, the industry was chilled when then - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded a policy shielding state-licensed medical marijuana operators from federal drug prosecutions.

Sessions, a staunch marijuana opponent later lost his job while President Donald Trump said he was inclined to support an effort by U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R- Colorado, to relax the federal prohibition.

Gardner and Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren have proposed legislation allowing state-approved commercial cannabis activity under federal law. The bill also would let states and Indian tribes determine how best to regulate marijuana commerce within their boundaries without fear of Federal intervention.

If those provisions become law, they could open up banking for the marijuana industry nationwide and make it easier for cannabis companies to secure capital.

 

Norway Is to be Second European Country to legalize Cannabis (2017)

In a momentous move for the country, Norway’s parliament have voted to decriminalize all drugs, including cannabis.
The Scandinavian nation will be just the second country in Europe to follow such practices
and have looked to Portugal’s decriminalization of drugs in 2001 as a demonstration of a success story.

The new law would offer treatment and assistance to those found with small quantities of drugs, rather than charging them as criminals.

Norway have a relatively low rate of drug users compared to other parts of Europe.
However, their figures still show an increase in the consumption of drugs, especially cannabis.

A 2017 report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction discovered
that around 8.6% of Norwegians aged 16-34 had used cannabis in the 12 months prior to survey.
Cannabis was also the most seized drug in the country over the last year.

However, once the law has been put into practice (which it hasn’t been yet)
those holding and consuming drugs in small quantities will not be punished.

The Green Gold Rush is ON

The legal marijuana market is on fire after reaching $6.7 billion in revenue in 2016,
but that's nothing compared to the expected growth of this once-illicit pastime.

After seven U.S. states legalized some form of marijuana this past election 2017, the legal weed industry
is on track to achieve 25% growth year over year through 2021 - and reach a whopping $20.2 billion in sales.

To put that in perspective, we haven't seen growth comparable to this
since the boom of broadband internet and cable TV.

And the green gold rush is showing no sign of slowing down

 

Fox News 420

If anyone tells you that marijuana is bad for you -
THEY'RE LYING THROUGH THEIR TEETH!

Comgratulations Colorado on this fine example of tenacity! Posted in The Denver Post October 8, 2013 page 11A