The industry on cannabis has become one of the fastest growing industries across the nation over the last several years. With new markets growing in and around the U.S., many polls are reporting that support for cannabis use and legalization, is higher than ever before.
One of the major factors that is moving the industry forward is the amount of legislation that is being put in place around the nation. Many states have decided to build new policies after seeing the success of markets around the West Coast that have been in place for several years now. The benefits of tax revenue and increased influx of capital both add up to make the industry on cannabis extremely enticing for investors.
Individuals who oppose the industry have stated that it could potentially lead to the use of more drugs and that it could potentially increase the issues of opium dependence around the country. Many studies have shown that cannabis can often be extremely beneficial to the same types of pain that many hard narcotics are used to treat. For this reason, cannabis has been said to decrease the amount of drug dependence depending on the situation in various locations around the U.S. and beyond.
One of the main issues that stands in the way of the industry becoming legalized on a wide basis is the legislation from the Federal government. The current scheduling of cannabis means that by government standards, the plant has no potential for medicinal use as well as a high rate of addiction. Both of these claims have been refuted many times over by various scientific studies and medicinal journals. Ironically, the Food and Drug Administration recently approved a drug for sale on the U.S. market that is based in the component known as cannabidiol or CBD within the cannabis plant. This was the first time that a drug has been approved using cannabis, and is continuing to show a massive paradigm shift in the way people think about cannabis throughout the nation and beyond.
Howard Finkelstein, a public defender in Broward County, Florida recently stated that “More people’s lives have been hurt or diminished by the criminal penalties for marijuana possession that have been hurt or diminished by using marijuana. And those same laws have set up a double standard of enforcement and justice along racial lines,” Finkelstein wrote. It is clear that there is a strong need for new legislation. Finkelstein continued to state that “While black and white populations use marijuana in about the same percentages if you are a person of color there is almost a four times greater chance you will be arrested and charged for possessing marijuana in Broward County — despite comprising less than one-third of the community’s population. That unequal enforcement of the law along racial lines has left many feeling that they are second-class citizens who don’t get the same standard of justice that others get — that their justice is separate but not equal. And they would be right.”
The industry on cannabis in the U.S. is very new, which means that there are a lot of factors that need to be ironed out before the industry can begin to operate in a similar manner to other markets. Only time will tell how the combination of new legislation from the federal government in combination with the changing public sentiment, will help to make the marijuana industry normalized throughout the U.S. The hopes are high that the industry will continue to perform to the high standards that it has already set for itself.
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