Cannabis as Possibility for Businesses : The Way Shown by The USA
Marijuana legalization in USA is representing a new business opportunity for American industry and for investors: some say that cannabis is going to be the best investment for the next ten years, thanks to tax revenue and crime reduction. Many States will probably follow the footsteps of Colorado and Washington, where sale, cultivation, possession and purchase of cannabis have already been legalized - for recreational purpose in addition to the medical use - with the aim of reducing illegal trafficking and prison overcrowding and supporting revenue into the state coffers.
Therapeutic use of cannabis is legal since 2000 in several U.S. states, and the pharmaceutical industry in particular has considerably developed in recent years. Quite significant is the Canadian model, where large and small companies are contending the leadership on the promising legal market of cannabis, by investing a lot of money in tech innovation. Creative Edge Nutrition, a big nutritional supplement company, is the first U.S. company to have obtained formal authorization from the Canada’s federal health department, Health Canada, to grow, distribute, import and export medicinal marijuana thanks to its technologically advanced structure which will produce in one year 590.000 kilograms of cannabis inflorescences.
How is the situation in India? Actually in the past the use of recreational cannabis was the norm: marijuana and other cannabis derivates, such as Bhang, were commonly consumed and sold in India until the mid-80s: in 1985 the Rajiv Gandhi government submitted under the American global law against all drugs and enacted a law called the Narcotic Drugs & Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act: this law equates marijuana to heroin, crack and cocaine and bans all of them in the same way, and the minimum punishment for violation is 10 years in prison. The results of prohibition, as evidenced by the new U.S. law, were not promising: drugs addiction grew, and illegal trade shifted from cannabis and derivates to dangerous and lethal drugs, because while the risk was the same they meant higher and easier profits.
Therapeutic use of cannabis is legal since 2000 in several U.S. states, and the pharmaceutical industry in particular has considerably developed in recent years. Quite significant is the Canadian model, where large and small companies are contending the leadership on the promising legal market of cannabis, by investing a lot of money in tech innovation. Creative Edge Nutrition, a big nutritional supplement company, is the first U.S. company to have obtained formal authorization from the Canada’s federal health department, Health Canada, to grow, distribute, import and export medicinal marijuana thanks to its technologically advanced structure which will produce in one year 590.000 kilograms of cannabis inflorescences.
How is the situation in India? Actually in the past the use of recreational cannabis was the norm: marijuana and other cannabis derivates, such as Bhang, were commonly consumed and sold in India until the mid-80s: in 1985 the Rajiv Gandhi government submitted under the American global law against all drugs and enacted a law called the Narcotic Drugs & Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act: this law equates marijuana to heroin, crack and cocaine and bans all of them in the same way, and the minimum punishment for violation is 10 years in prison. The results of prohibition, as evidenced by the new U.S. law, were not promising: drugs addiction grew, and illegal trade shifted from cannabis and derivates to dangerous and lethal drugs, because while the risk was the same they meant higher and easier profits.
It was estimated that in 2014 the U.S. market for legal cannabis will grow by 68%, thanks to a new generation of companies that will develop in the areas of research, investment and insurance: the improvement of a responsible and politically-engaged legal cannabis industry is a kind of revolutionary pattern that many other states are observing and perhaps putting into practice. As in the past, India could follow the path marked out by US Government and regain possession of its lifestyle, when one could purchase cannabis from government-licensed shops, as it was part of Indian culture for centuries.
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