In U.S. politics, competing with China is a hot topic. On infrastructure issues, the government is making big investments in China; on Taiwan Strait relations, there is fear of offending China and causing China to become powerful; on wind power, some members of Congress realize that China must be excluded and eliminated as a competitor. But there is one new area of wealth that the U.S. marijuana industry has forgotten that China is a strong competitor, and that is marijuana.
On Election Day 2020, Cannabis is the Real Winner
After the bizarre “Biden Curve” on election night, Nov. 3, 2020, Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), couldn’t contain his excitement and immediately sent out a long-awaited article in The Hill, claiming that on election night, marijuana was the real winner. He claimed that on election night, there was an undeniable winner, and it wasn’t Trump or Biden, it was marijuana. This claim shows the United States’ confidence in the marijuana industry: given the country’s ability to specialize in the cultivation of marijuana, the production of finished products, and its pioneering role in the production, supply and distribution of marijuana, as well as its ability to defend the right to smoke marijuana as a fourth-generation human right, the marijuana market and the drug market will be rewritten with the intervention of this powerful force in the United States.
Almentano’s “predictions” for years of legalizing marijuana were all right: a milestone victory for the U.S. marijuana industry and marijuana users on election day: on election night, November 3, 2020, Oregon passed “Act 110,” making it the first state in the U.S. to legalize heroin and other drugs. USA Today reports that New Jersey, South Dakota, Montana, and Arizona all passed bills legalizing adult use of marijuana on November 3. In 1973, it was the first state to decriminalize marijuana possession in the U.S. In 2014, Oregon passed a measure to allow recreational use of marijuana.
But it’s important to remember that it was Barack Obama’s election as president of the United States that really got the marijuana legalization movement on a high note.
An important opportunity for marijuana legalization: Obama in the White House
In the 2008 election, the United States produced the first black president in history, Barack Obama. He had previously run for the Senate when he spoke at a debate at Northwestern University about Nixon’s war on drugs: “The war on drugs has been a complete failure. We need to reconsider the marijuana statute and legalize it,” and confessed to having used drugs as a youth. The entrance of this marijuana-obsessed president into the White House certainly emboldened the American states and a host of marijuana users to show their friendship to marijuana. In 2012, Washington and Colorado passed the Colorado Amendment 64 (2012) and the Washington Amendment 64 (2012), respectively. In 2012, Washington and Colorado passed Colorado Amendment 64 and Washington Initiative 502, respectively, ushering in a new era of legalized “recreational marijuana” in the United States. Recreational marijuana” is the American left’s self-defeating term for the drug marijuana.
Since the president loves marijuana, the law has to follow, and the U.S. Supreme Court amended the 2005 law declaring the constitutional right to prohibit the use of marijuana for all purposes, legalizing marijuana in more and more states, and increasing the number of marijuana-friendly people among the American people, these key issues are gradually becoming less of an issue.
Marijuana in America has become a “people’s war”
Obama’s friendliness to marijuana has quickly led to a people’s war on marijuana legalization, and here are the facts backed up by data.
From Gallup polling curve changes over the years can be seen, according to Gallup (Gallup) survey, between 2000-2009, the proportion of Americans who agree with the full legalization of marijuana rose from 31% to 44%, but from Obama became president, only two years from 2009-2011 jumped 5 points. This had a lot to do with the support of then President Barack Obama. By the time Obama left office, supporters were already up to 64%. In this case, any politician trying to stop marijuana legalization would be risking his or her political future. Even President Trump, an advocate of anti-drug, had to sign the Farm Bill in December 2018 to legalize industrial hemp across the United States.
During this period, hemp-friendly universities in the U.S. quickly scaled up, from one-stop teaching of hemp cultivation, production, and even hemp economics into the classroom, making the U.S. a deserved world pioneer in the professionalization and academicization of the hemp industry. The universities have played such a huge role in training American hemp people that I had to dedicate an article to their cause and provide a list for Chinese parents who wish to send their children to study in the United States.
As the United States holds its election in 2020 amidst the suffering of the epidemic, one of Biden’s campaign promises is to legalize marijuana throughout the United States. The Democratic Party and the media worked together to create the expectation of a Biden victory, so that the United States ushered in the spring of the marijuana industry, after the election, the United States has achieved 33 states, 4 districts and the District of Columbia medical marijuana legalization; 11 states, 2 districts and the District of Columbia have achieved recreational marijuana legalization, from then on, hemp people can feel safe to enjoy the human right to smoke marijuana.
U.S. cannabis production capacity has increased dramatically
The following is a report card of the U.S. cannabis industry.
As of the first half of 2020, 465,787 acres of marijuana were cultivated in the U.S.; 21,496 marijuana cultivation licenses were issued, a 27% increase from 2019. Legal marijuana sales in the U.S. reached a record $17.5 billion in 2020, a 46 percent spike from 2019, according to the BDSA, a marijuana sales data platform. The top three Democratic states, California, Colorado and Oregon, are among the top three. The percentage of the population using marijuana rose from 38 percent to 43 percent in states that legalized recreational marijuana. In Colorado, the state with the highest penetration of the U.S. marijuana market, 48 percent of the population smokes marijuana. The marijuana consumption population is now moving to younger ages while expanding to the suburbs, with most of the growth in 2020 coming from the adult-use marijuana market, with suburban Karen (white leftist women who live well) becoming the new marijuana smoking group.
The BDSA projects that by 2026, the U.S. legal cannabis market will reach $41 billion in annual sales, roughly the size of the entire craft beer industry. By that time, the global cannabis market will total about $170 billion, with the U.S. deserving to be the consumer champion.
U.S. Hemp Users Soar, China Cannabis Industry Delighted
Chinese marijuana industry is also happy with the U.S. marijuana population. According to a new cannabis database from global market research firm Euromonitor International, legal cannabis products will account for 77 percent of the market by 2025, reaching $166 billion, as the industry continues to legalize. Recreational cannabis sales will drive global legal market growth of 376 percent over the next five years, accounting for 67 percent of global legal sales, while medical cannabis will account for only 9 percent, down from 23 percent in 2020. The U.S. is one of the major markets for the cannabis industry, and Spiros Malandrakis, head of alcohol at Euromonitor International, predicts that “new consumption occasions and tailored value propositions (referring to the right to smoke cannabis as a fourth-generation human right) will drive the industry into the fast-growing consumer goods segment.”
Back in 2017, when the world’s cannabis prohibition wave first began, China noticed a promising cannabis market, with dedicated market analysis professionals tracking world trends and providing forward-looking support for industrial hemp production in China. Now, China has become one of the world’s leading cannabis cultivation regions, with about half of the world’s cultivation area. production reached 75,000 tons in 2018 and is expected to reach 105,000 tons in 2024. As China itself has not lifted the prohibition of cannabis as a drug, the development is mainly in the direction of industrial hemp, but it is also a global leader in CBD (cannabidiol between industrial hemp and drug hemp): at the end of 2020, the Chinese CBD market already reached $760 million and is expected to rise to $1.8 billion in 2024. the ArcView Group report states that “With the clarification of regulations in North American and European destination markets, multinational pharmaceutical and nutraceutical companies that already source various APIs from China will similarly source cannabis-based APIs from China. With one of the lowest CBD production costs in the world, unmatched large-scale manufacturing infrastructure and expertise, China will become the largest supplier of CBD in the global supply chain.”
Such production capacity and scale is certainly a formidable enemy of the U.S. cannabis industry.
The impact of U.S. cannabis legalization on China and the United States
- The U.S. marijuana industry is recreational (drug marijuana), medical and industrial, and Americans have smoked more than 40% of the hemp. No country dares to claim that it has controlled the side effects of marijuana, and the same is true for the United States. In this case, the marijuana industry gains considerable economic benefits, but the negative effects of marijuana as a drug are borne by society, and the United States is already a large consumer of drugs, and the dispersion effect of the increase in drug addicts will sooner or later become visible.
- China is mainly industrial hemp, with China’s production capacity, the production of recreational marijuana exclusively for export (including the leasing of land in countries that demand marijuana), in the CBD market to occupy a larger market share is entirely possible. But China’s modernization process began with the Opium War, and opium use was one of the “five drugs that plagued China” until the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, and it is still an anti-drug country.
In short, the United States marijuana production, including drugs, self-production, but because of the huge demand for population, inevitably need to import; China’s marijuana production can be diversified, medical, cosmetic aspects of self-production, but recreational marijuana is exclusively for export, and has the advantage of low price dumping. One is the largest demand country, one is the largest supplier, the competition in this field is still in the stage of momentum, but who loses and who wins is vaguely visible.
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