Every Monday, Zeweed brings you the best in hemp wellness and cannabis news with this week’s Business Cann, NL Times, 20 Minutos, Forbes, Infobae and African Business.
United States: The House of Congress approves a bill to decriminalize cannabis nationwide.
On Friday April 1, the lower house of the US Congress passed the MORE Act, a Democratic initiative that would end federal prohibition of cannabis by removing it from the list of banned substances. This is the second time the bill has passed the House; however, it will face strong headwinds in the Senate, which had already rejected the bill in 2020.
The MORE Act would end prohibition at the federal level, but leave the choice of whether or not to legalize it to each state. The cannabis industry generated $25 billion in sales last year, up 43% on 2020. By 2030, this figure is expected to reach $65 billion.
The Forbes article is available here.
Portugal: Cannabis exports increased 6-fold in 2021.
Portuguese cannabis exports increased by 566% in 2021, according to information from the Portuguese National Medical Authority Infarmed.“The quantity of dried flowers with a moisture content equal to or less than 10% exported in 2021 reached 30 tons” said the government agency, exceeding 2020’s 4.5, an increase of almost 600%.
Inframed points out that “the value of exports should be exceeded this year“, as cannabis exports from Portugal between January and February have already reached 10 tonnes.
At present, almost all the cannabis produced by the 18 companies authorized to cultivate in Portugal is exported, while only one cannabis derivative is on sale in the country’s pharmacies.
The Business Cann article is available here.
UK: After a year’s delay, the government publishes the list of CBD products approved for sale.
After a delay of exactly one year, the long-awaited public list of validated UK CBD products has been published by the Food Standards Agency (FSA)
The list released by the FSA states that only 3,500 products are still authorized for sale in the UK – with “several thousand” more now banned. The original deadline for publication of the list was March 31, 2021, although FSA Chief Executive Emily Miles claimed in a media call yesterday that the list was “not late” – and that the delay was due to poor quality applications.
The Business Cann article is here.
Netherlands: Plans to authorize the cultivation of recreational cannabis postponed again.
The Dutch experiment in the cultivation of medicinal and recreational cannabis has once again been postponed indefinitely. The hearing in favor of the initiative and its ruling are not expected until the second quarter of 2023. Information given by Ministers Ernst Kuipers (Public Health) and Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius (Justice and Security), in a letter to Parliament on March 31. The original plan was to start producing on Dutch territory selling cannabis, following a legal breakthrough made in 2020. This was then postponed to the second half of 2022, before being rescheduled for next year.
The NL Times article is available here.
Spain: Pharmacists lobby for the legalization of medical cannabis.
On Monday March 28, the General Council of Pharmacists proposed a pilot trial in pharmacies to evaluate the use of cannabis for therapeutic purposes. A product which, in the opinion of the pharmacists’ president, could have a use and conditions of use similar to those for other compounds such as morphine.
In the sub-committee analyzing the possible medical use of cannabis in Spain in Congress, several experts and members of the government spoke on the same day, called upon to contribute to the debate raised around the use of cannabis for therapeutic purposes.
The 20 Minutos article is available here.
Argentina: The government authorizes the cultivation of medical cannabis by several NGOs.
After two years of meetings, requests, consultations and proposals, the national Ministry of Health has announced that non-profit cannabis organizations will be able to legally grow medical cannabis for their members. The number of patients who will be able to benefit from cannabis treatment, however, is limited to 150 applicants.
A resolution published this Tuesday in the Official Gazette confirms the information that Infobae put forward last February: Reprocann (the register of users and growers managed by the Health Department), now includes NGOs, which have been given the green light to legally grow and distribute cannabis flowers.
The InfoBae article is available here.
South Africa: President Cyril Ramaphosa is determined not to miss out on the cannabis business.
“We’re going to review the policy and regulatory framework for industrial hemp and therapeutic and recreational cannabis, which will be good news for everyone in view of the huge investment and job creation potential that cannabis represents. Now, this natural product, which our people grow and harvest for many purposes, is going to be industrialized. ”
The legal hemp and cannabis sector, Ramaphosa added on the same day, has the potential to create over 130,000 new jobs in South Africa. To illustrate his point, President Cyril Ramaphosa referred to Lesotho (the small independent kingdom nestled in the north of South Africa) as a fine example of a country that has been able to capitalize on the economic windfall of the cannabis business.
The African Business article is available here.
