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Malawi legalises the growing, selling and export of cannabis
- bitxbitxbitcoin 7y agoBut personal consumption isn't allowed. This is a classic example of a government getting in on legalization for the money and not for the betterment of its citizens.
- dkural 7y agoI am not sure how full legalization contributes to the betterment of citizens, especially young citizens.
- klingonopera 7y agoBy not treating consumers as criminals? By giving consumers, who are troubled balancing recreation and addiction, the proper treatment? In my opinion, it's definitely easier to "handle" drugs when we can openly talk about them and their negative effects, without business and government telling us what to think about them.
- edoceo 7y agoIn USA, eg, the tax revenue is used to fund drug education among other useful things. Recreational usage states in USA have also seen a decline in pot usage by school-age young adults (however, I'm thinking it's been replaced with something else and we dont have data on that yet)
- MaupitiBlue 7y agoHow can you not think that what young people need is to spend more time stoned?
- whateveracct 7y agoA young citizen not being arrested for consuming weed seems good to me. When you multiply that event over the entire population, you have a huge regressive cost forced on these people. Imagine if they didn't pay that cost and instead lived their otherwise upstanding lives :) that is how you benefit society bottom-up.
- Nursie 7y ago> I am not sure how full legalization contributes to the betterment of citizens, especially young citizens. Your mistake is to assume a simple relationship between legalisation and use, and that there are no benefits to those young people already using or who would use anyway. Keeping kids out of the criminal justice system is a huge thing.
- dumbfoundded 7y agoCriminalization of drugs in the United States is primarily a political concern. Massive numbers of poor people and minorities have been excluded from our political process due to drug use. In Florida, 1.6M felons were "given" the right vote again (1). Most of the large elections in Florida are decided by less than 100K votes. The governor's race was more like 35K difference. Who do you think these ex-cons will vote for? 1) https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-voted-to-give-1-4-million-felons-the-right-to-vote-it-hasnt-gone-smoothly-11581174000 https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-voted-to-give-1-4-milli...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bregma 7y agoWhen cannabis was legalized in Canada consumption rates did not go up. In fact, they didn't change much at all: they stayed fairly high (no pun, honest). This is evidence that making possession of cannabis illegal has far less to do "think of the children" and more to do with either mindless political dogma or else preservation of personal privilege of some elites somewhere (and those two options are not mutually exclusive).
- klingonopera 7y agoYeah, there are many political reasons for criminalizing it. What I found pretty eye-opening in the sense of "Oh wow, that's so obvious, I actually didn't think about that" was that one of the reasons was the American Prohibition in the 30s, and after it was abolished, a bunch of people were about to lose their jobs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXPOw2unxy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXPOw2unxy0
- wdb 7y agoNot much different as weed being illegal in The Netherlands but the government is looking the other way and condoning it.
- bilekas 7y agoWait a min.. > legalised the growing, selling and export of cannabis. > But the country still restricts the legalization of cannabis for personal use So you can grow it and even sell it.. But if you dare consume it you're a criminal ? Or the person you sell it to, if they consume it they're breaking the ? This sounds very odd! EDIT: My mistake, its for hemp and oil production. That makes way more sense.
- Scoundreller 7y agoThen there’s Canada, where you can grow it or buy it (from legal distributors), but import/export is verboten without a license that’s impossible to get for personal use.
- loeg 7y agoIn Washington you can buy it for personal use, but can't pass a joint to a friend (still a felony) and can't grow a single plant for personal use without a full commercial grower's license.
- retrac 7y agoWhere would Canada be exporting it to? Until now, the only other country besides Canada with fully legal cannabis was Uruguay. As I understand it, those clauses were in the Cannabis Act to assuage the concerns of other nations that Canada might get involved in what they would see as international drug trafficking.
- TomTomXC 7y agoA large percentage of medical cannabis consumed in Germany is sourced from Canada, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_in_Deutschland_erh%C3%A4ltlichen_medizinischen_Hanfsorten https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_in_Deutschland_erh%C...
- loeg 7y agoAlso, many countries (186) are nominally still party to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which puts marijuana in "Schedule IV:" "The drug … is particularly liable to abuse and to produce ill effects, and such liability is not offset by substantial therapeutic advantages." So even above-board international trade in cannabis may be problematic. > The Commentary notes that "Whether the prohibition of drugs in Schedule IV (cannabis and cannabis resin, desomorphine, heroin, ketobemidone) should be mandatory or only recommended was a controversial question at the Plenipotentiary Conference." The provision adopted represents "a compromise which leaves prohibition to the judgement, though theoretically not to the discretion, of each Party." The Parties are required to act in good faith in making this decision, or else they will be in violation of the treaty. (Wikipedia)
- dingribanda 7y agoIn some parts of Africa, growing khat is more lucrative than growing food. This causes acute food shortages. I am not sure how this is going to affect growing food, if cannabis is more lucrative than growing food.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoIf it is more lucrative than growing food, does that mean you can buy an equivalent amount of imported food and pocket the profits? If that was the case then it would be an example globalization at work. (note, I don't know if it is) Similarly, would wealthy khat growers be willing to pay more for food? Since they have more wealth? If so then it would create inflationary pressure on food prices and thus make growing food pay more than it had before. I can easily imagine that the markets would be imbalanced at first, but it seems the mechanisms would correct that if it is simply more valuable to grow khat.
- Mirioron 7y ago>If it is more lucrative than growing food, does that mean you can buy an equivalent amount of imported food and pocket the profits? If that was the case then it would be an example globalization at work. If the infrastructure for transporting that food exists, then yes. The problem with relying on food from other countries is that it undermined your (food) security. It's possible that this can be used as a tool in in relations against your country or in the time of a crisis you're more likely to be left hanging. Eg look at all those companies/countries that depend on some important goods from China. During the current crisis the resources in China will be used in China first. Now imagine that same situation, but with food. I think that's why western countries subsidize agriculture so heavily.
- Koremat6666 7y agoIf infra for food transportation does not exist then the point is even more valid. If I have village where no food can be imported and limited amount of agricultural land. If I grow khat how am I going to feed my family if outside food can not come in ? Will the villagers be willing to pay more khat even when food is scarce ? I think I am missing something.
- michaelrubin 7y agoIn college, my economics professor put a question on the final about how we might solve the economic issues around the corn blight in Malawi. At the time, I wouldn't have dared raise this as the answer.
- lavezzi 7y agoThey are shifting focus from growing tobacco to growing weed. This really doesn't solve anything aside from replacing the economic output from a rapidly declining industry.
- stevespang 7y agoSo where do you draw the line between narco states and legal industry ? $50,000 to get a license. $15K to $20K for an annual renewal of license.
- brianbreslin 7y agoI heard lesotho has a huge business of selling medical marijuana to Europe. [1] I met a guy in this business, the scale is huge. 1. https://time.com/5752765/lesotho-africa-cannibabis-exports/ https://time.com/5752765/lesotho-africa-cannibabis-exports/
- dumbfoundded 7y agoThe European cannabis market is early and developing. Many companies have been bitten by building out capacity before demand. All of the Canadian cannabis companies way over produce for the Canadian market so they planned to sell to Europe and possibly the US. Other countries like Columbia are also aiming to get this international export market.
- 52-6F-62 7y agoFrom what I understand the overproduction isn't because of lack of demand, but provinces' slow rollout of sale and distribution. For instance, here in Ontario the government had a plan that would have had 40 physical stores across the province by October 2018 with plans for more. The incoming government killed that. The province saw fewer than 20 stores by the following April, largely concentrated in Toronto. Everything did look primed for a great market and it was essentially kneecapped out of political spite.
- dumbfoundded 7y agoIIRC, the value of the combined public Canadian cannabis companies was >$10B (before the 2019 q2/q3 collapse). The size of the Canadian cannabis market is <$5B. I believe analysts priced in the export market opportunity, particularly to Europe and the United States. I do believe problems with the implementation in the Canadian market hurt cashflows and accelerated the expected timeline of investors to find other markets. These rollout problems certainly hurt but everyone knew Canada isn't a huge market.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- carredondo 7y agoI read that as "growling"
- dzonga 7y agomalawi already has a reputation in southern african countries of producing some potent weed. I guess, this is a good move for them. hopefully, in SA n zim they will able to access Malawi weed easily now
- CurtBurbinger 7y agoHow big of a deal is this for North American growers?
- loeg 7y agoProbably not a big deal? The fed still thinks weed is illegal and if customs is doing their job, above-board imports won't be permitted. The existing smuggling industry is probably already cornered by cartels and don't pay much for their supply anyway.
- CurtBurbinger 7y agoCanada has legal grow operations though
- retrac 7y agoCanada presently prohibits all import and export of cannabis. It's legally restricted to a purely domestic industry. That could change of course, but probably not until a number more countries legalize the growing and export of cannabis.
- cies 7y agoFinally. I've got the impression that many drugs were politically criminalized in order make sure non-western countries would not get wealthy by them. (Yet publicly different reasons were used) And no this is not like oil. Mining (for oil or gold among others) is a very different business than farming (for weed or coca or opium among others), leading to a different wealth distribution. All that western "free trade" promotion BS while being so so careful with importing agricultural products to "protect local farmers" whom in turn became a small % yet heavily amplified in output by their diesel machines: this clearly made winners and losers in the global "free" trade game. Nuf ranting: this news shows some movement towards common sense policy.