Canada's legalization of marijuana could hurt farmers in poorer countries

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Canada's legalization of marijuana could hurt farmers in poorer countries

25 October 2018

By Hilary Clarke, CNN

For decades poor farmers in countries like Jamaica and Morocco have risked the wrath of governments and gangsters to grow cannabis as a cash crop.

But as Canada becomes the first country in the Group of Seven leading industrial nations to fully legalize marijuana, those countries where the crop has traditionally been grown risk losing out on new legal markets worth billions of dollars.When people think of cannabis production in developing countries, they tend to picture drug cartels and bandits.The truth, says Martin Jelsma of the Transnational Institute (TNI), a Dutch drug-policy research organization, is that most growers are poor farmers, often women, who cultivate marijuana on small holdings in the hills and mountains.