On May 1, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland appeared before the Canadian Senate’s Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (AEFA) to discuss the international dimensions of Bill C-45 to regulate cannabis. She acknowledged that regulating cannabis would entail “contravening certain obligations related to cannabis under the three UN drug conventions,” adding that, “we have to be honest about that.” Asked about the ‘inter se’ proposal, whereby like-minded nations can negotiate amongst themselves to contract out of certain provisions of the treaty, Minister Freeland replied that the government had discussed the ‘inter se’ concept and that it was worth thinking about: “We are definitely open to working with treaty partners to identify solutions that accommodate different approaches to cannabis within the international framework.”

Germany's plans to legalise cannabis consumption in 2024 are looking increasingly unlikely as it has yet to submit its proposals to the European Commission, the health ministry confirmed to Euronews. The ministry said that its draft law for the legalisation of cannabis is “currently being drafted” within the federal government. “A large number of legal and operational questions concerning implementation need to be answered and coordinated between the ministries in charge” before it can be submitted to the European Commission, it added. Berlin unveiled its bold project to legalise cannabis in October 2022. Under the plan, German consumers would be allowed to buy up to 30 grammes of cannabis for private consumption with supplies cultivated and distributed through a controlled market.

Done mostly indoors in Washington, pot production often uses hospital-intensity lamps, air conditioning, dehumidifiers, fans and carbon-dioxide generators to stimulate plants and boost their potency. The carbon footprint of producing 2.2 pounds of marijuana indoors is equivalent to driving across country seven times, according to a peer-reviewed study. Yet almost no one is pushing for cleaner sun-grown weed as state officials make rules for legal growing operations. Pot production often uses hospital-intensity lamps, air conditioning, dehumidifiers, fans and carbon-dioxide generators to stimulate plants and boost their potency. The power-hungry crops rival data centers or server farms in intense use of electricity.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by eight prospective parties on forming a coalition government in Thailand could be bad news for advocates of the current freer cannabis policy. Under the 23-point agreement, the Move Forward Party-led bloc has agreed to reinstate the plant as a narcotic drug under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Health and pass new laws supporting just certain beneficial uses while regulating all other use, cultivation, import and export of the plant. The move marks a reversal of the cannabis policy which has become divisive and politicised due to the absence of an umbrella law to govern its use despite the introduction of regulations to prevent abuse, particularly by children.

California’s marijuana market, which reached an estimated $4.4 billion in sales in 2020, has seemingly reached peak cannabis capitalism. But the overwhelming sense amongst the so-called “legacy growers” is that they’re at a breaking point, exhausted by the regulations of the industry that they largely created. Protecting existing growers was a pillar of Proposition 64, which legalized marijuana for adult use. Legalization advocates included a provision to encourage legacy growers to join the legal market, promising that no cultivation site would be larger than one acre until 2023, so that small farms wouldn’t face competition from multi-acre ‘mega farms’ for at least five years. But cannabis industry lobbyists persuaded the California Department of Food and Agriculture to change the provision.

Roland Conner never imagined that getting arrested for marijuana in the ‘90s would lead to where he is now: the owner of a new cannabis dispensary in the heart of Greenwich Village. The blocks surrounding his shop, Smacked Village, are bustling with potential customers among the NYU students and people coming in for the city’s nightlife — and New York took extraordinary steps to make it work. By far the biggest perk is that a state agency located, leased and will renovate a storefront on one of the priciest slabs of real estate in the world to help someone sell a drug that once landed people in prison. But Conner’s fledgling cannabis business is also vastly outnumbered by illicit competitors that have sprouted all over the city since the state legalized weed for adults nearly two years ago.

When the German government announced in late 2021 its plan to legalize recreational cannabis sales in Germany, experts and cannabis enthusiasts put great expectations on the so-called "traffic light" government's plan to regulate the industry. Although Germany and other European countries focused in recent months on the war in Ukraine following the Russian invasion in February and the resulting efforts to detach themselves from Russian energy dependence, German officials had time to speed up the process of legalizing recreational cannabis. Commissioner for Addiction and Drug Issues Burkhard Blienert officially announced on June 13 the kickoff of the first of five expert hearings to prepare for the planned legislative process to legalize recreational cannabis.

With Canada the largest nation to completely legalize marijuana, the world’s most valuable pot company, Canopy Growth Corp., founded in 2013 and now worth about $6.4 billion, is one of the most controversial pot companies, the embodiment of Big Marijuana that critics contend uses size, market power, and lobbying prowess to accelerate the loosening of cannabis laws around the world and shoulder out competitors and smaller businesses. Already Big Alcohol, Big Tobacco, and Big Pharma have bought their way into Canopy and other marijuana companies. And, like those longstanding giants, the new cannabis corporations are spending millions of dollars lobbying for laws that let them sell large volumes of potentially addictive products.

The House of Representatives passed the MORE Act on Friday by a vote of 228-164. It was 2018, Democrats were about to gain control of the House of Representatives, and cannabis justice advocates knew they needed to get to work. Every two years, a handful of new states were joining those that had already legalized cannabis, either recreationally or medicinally. Federal decriminalization was inevitable. If advocates wanted to have any say in what legislation would look like, the first Democratic House majority since 2011 was their best chance to make inroads. Every cannabis measure up for a vote last month passed convincingly. One in three Americans now live in states that have legalized recreational use.

While cannabis is being legalised in many countries around the world, South Africa still finds itself in a state of legislative limbo, with more and more businesses offering “legal weed”. Both medicinal and recreational cannabis are in high demand and growing acceptance has resulted in improved access to the plant and its products. However, despite an eased approach to cannabis in recent years, a “legal grey area” continues to cause widespread confusion in a largely unregulated industry. Meanwhile, as clubs and dispensaries continue to open across the country, raids are occurring and operators are finding themselves at odds with the law. 

If the federal government legalizes cannabis, lawmakers should beware of monopolization by national corporations, says Shaleen Title, chief executive of the cannabis policy think tank Parabola Center. Title authored a paper on preventing monopolies in the marijuana market, outlining how domination by big business is a threat to the existing cannabis industry. She writes that “the recent wave of market consolidation and high barriers to entry for smaller actors foreshadow a future national market controlled by only a handful of companies.” Title cautions that tobacco and alcohol companies are quietly laying the groundwork with the hope of controlling the legal cannabis market.

Does the cannabis legalisation planned by the German government's traffic lights coalition violate European law and relevant UN agreements? While Bavarian Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (CSU) presented an expert opinion by law professor Bernhard Wegener from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Munich, who answered this question with a clear "yes", LTO has received an unpublished legal study by two scientists from the University of Nijmegen, which comes to the opposite conclusion. They examined the relevant EU Framework Decision 2004/757/JHA, which obliges Member States to criminalise any form of illicit trafficking in drugs and thus also in cannabis. 

Supplying coffeeshops with cannabis is illegal, so this is being done through a complicated ‘back-door’ policy. There might be a change coming with the start of the ‘controlled cannabis supply chain experiment’. Ten municipalities with a grand total of 79 coffeeshops have been selected for the experiment. These coffeeshops will start selling legally produced cannabis supplied by ten government-designated growers. The aim is to find out whether it is possible to regulate a quality-controlled supply of cannabis to coffeeshops and to see if the experiment has any effect on crime, safety and public health. A lot of people are happy about the new direction the Netherlands seems to be moving in, but others are critical and think progress is too slow.

The referendum on legalising recreational cannabis use is just over a month away. Campaigns for and against the change are well under way. We’ve had expert reports from the Helen Clark Foundation, the Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research and meetings around the country to discuss the likely effects of the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill (CLCB). So, what can be learned from other countries that have already legalised cannabis or reformed their laws? And how does New Zealand’s proposed law stack up against the overseas evidence?

A bill to allow recreational cannabis use has been signed by President George Vella and is now part of Maltese law. Legal Notice 478 notes that the Authority on the Responsible Use of Cannabis Act has now come into force and establishes Innovation Minister Owen Bonnici as the minister responsible for it. The legal notice was published four days after the bill was sent to President Vella for his signature, after a majority of MPs voted in its favour. Appeals from some factions for the president to refuse to sign the law were shot down by the head of state himself: “In no way can the president, under our system, impose his decision on those representing the people in parliament, whether he agrees with it or not.” (See also: 'This is no smokescreen' - Owen Bonnici interviewed on cannabis reform)

Malta is poised to become a centre for the production of medical marijuana – while also relaxing its cannabis legislation further – after decades of a no-compromise, ‘zero tolerance’ policy towards all drugs. Some see this as a direct U-turn, that will turn the country into a drug traffickers’ paradise. But Julia Farrugia-Portelli, the parliamentary secretary entrusted with the reform, argues that the whole point is to eliminate trafficking, and maximise the user’s safety. "What is happening today is a continuation from the previous legislature. Our argument was: if someone is caught with a joint, it shouldn’t lead to a situation where that person’s criminal record is tarnished. That reform was affected in the last legislature; now, we are taking it a step further."

Some local ganja farmers are fuming over reports that a licence has been granted to a company to import Canadian cannabis into Jamaica. Speaking inside the ‘Jamaica Cannabis Industry Forum’ WhatsApp group, President of the Jamaica Cannabis Licensed Association, Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin, asked growers to figuratively “holster [their] weapons and keep [their] powder dry”, noting that the Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA) was aware of the ire created within the local industry following the latest development. (See also: Hylton slams Hill’s ‘dubious’ claim on ganja imports | Gov't to formulate local cannabis policy following Canadian company backlash)

Trudeau's argument for legalization is concerned less with creating benefits, and more with reducing harms. He starts from the same place that many legalization opponents start from — concern for the safety of children. He points to an easy-to-overlook fact: It's alreadyincredibly easy for teenagers to get high if they want to. In 2015, for instance, nearly 80 percent of U.S. 12th-graders said it would be easy for them to obtain marijuana. It's clear, in other words, that current policies centered on making the drug completely illegal are doing little to keep it out of the hands of kids who want to use it.