For the benefit of our Irish and European readers, we examine the history of the cannabis industry in this first of three pieces. Let’s evaluate the recent, but rapidly growing regulation of a legal cannabis sector in Europe and how our laws have started to shift away from blanket prohibition in the context of a thriving and increasingly sophisticated industry in North America and other nations across the Atlantic.
The Cannabis Industry: What Is It?
It is a general term that can signify different things to different individuals and frequently has confusingly similar terms. The word “cannabis” refers to both hemp and marijuana together. The THC (the psychoactive ingredient) threshold of 0.3 percent separates hemp from marijuana despite the fact that these plants are both members of the same species (Cannabis sativa). Each has a long history of industrial, medical, and recreational usage. The traditional definition of the cannabis industry as we know it today is all activities and professionals directly or indirectly associated with the legal cultivation, distribution, sale, and use of hemp and marijuana for medical or recreational purposes. This also applies to business applications. The legality of such products or actions varies by jurisdiction.
Since the Vikings employed hemp as a fabric for their tapestries more than three thousand years ago, hemp has been used for industrial purposes. The original Gutenberg bible printings were created on hemp-based paper. Hemp was used to make the sails, nets, and rope on Christopher Columbus’ fleet. It was inexpensive, abundant, and dependable, but because cotton and petroleum-based synthetic fibers are easier to produce and import in large quantities, they eventually replaced it.
Much more recently, maybe as early as 1798 when Napoleon’s forces brought hashish back from their campaign in Egypt, marijuana has been used as a medication or as a recreational drug. Napoleon later outlawed hashish in Egypt, but local French authorities turned a blind eye and it quickly became commonly used in Paris.
What Alternated?
Confusion, in brief. As early as 1925, marijuana was the focus of a global scale control system (see the League of Nations Opium Convention). Around the same time as states all throughout the United States, Ireland made cannabis illegal in 1934. Many nations had tight regulations or bans in place by the 1950s. increased worldwide restrictions on marijuana usage for recreational purposes, partly due to a misunderstanding of the differences between the hemp and marijuana plants. The UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961), the first of a series of International Drug Control Conventions (IDCCs), which continue to have a significant impact on state drug policy around the world, prohibited hemp as a narcotic. Activities relating to non-medical and non-scientific research were exempt. Nevertheless, the background music changed, industrial hemp production drastically decreased as a result of the IDCCs, and hemp acquired the same negative connotations as marijuana.
Globally, both scheduled and controlled medicines have been added one by one, with all of the resulting penal effects.
Switching Point
Globally, restrictive restrictions rolled in up until the turn of the 20th century, when there was a noticeable shift in favor of various sorts of legalization, from short-term legalization for medicinal use to full legalization for personal use. By a significant margin, the United States (but not all of its states) and Canada currently dominate the global market. However, due to its sizeable population and robust economy, Europe is expected to surpass these two markets by a wide margin by the year 2028, when its market will be worth €123 billion.
Cannabis has completed a full circle in just 100 years, becoming one of the fastest growing worldwide industries. The extent to which harmonization is likely to occur any time soon varies on the sub-product being addressed, such as medicinal marijuana vs. CBD oil of 0.2 percent THC. Europe, like the USA, is a patchwork of varied legislation on the subject.
Keep an eye out for the piece we publish the following week, in which we examine the status of cannabis legislation in Europe’s major cannabis markets.
