Fairtrade cannabis (serius)

[madd0ct0r]

The tide of legalisation is rising, not just state to state but country to country. Big licensed farms in the Uk now, and there's too much profit for lawmakers to ignore it much longer, so I can see steady growth and accpetance through familairty.

0) I am assuming no particualr health risks

1) THE BIG ONE. Is there any legal way to move it between countries? Is there likely to be?

2) currently it's grown locally hydroponically, mostly becuase of patchy legislsation, well developed techniques and shorter production chains being easier to set up. Is this likely to remain the case? Tropics can grow it in the soil, at scale and with ease meaning cheaper bulk then hydroponics. Hemps felixibilty and durability is legenedary. I suspect that's comparing a durable shetland pony to a bred racehorse for commerical varieties, but there's probably a happy medium.

3) explotivie bannana republics are bad, and weed seems like the catergory as coffee - it needs processing to gian value, and the processed bud can be frozen/oiled and stored easily for a few years. This is putting middlemen in massive position of power over farmers. Much like coffee/tea, integrated plantations become welath extraction machines, and small farmers get nobbled. This is where fairtrade stepped in, and where fairtrade weed perhaps should too?

4) will the fairtrade foundation be willing to associate with it? They don't do tobacco. If not, will a free standing assoc be able to command the same trust?

[LaCroix]

The processing is by no way bad enough that it can't be done by small farmers. People do it in their homes, right now.
The product is not consumed in daily quantities like tea/coffee or tobacco, for obvious reasons (people need to function during the day).
It can be grown at home for small cost, or obtained (via shops) from a local small-sized growshop at pretty much the same price.

Industrial processing would most likely lower the quality by loosing finer parts of the bud. Also, transport expenses only make big plantations viable if the consumption was much higher or the value per unit much higher (see cocaine). Just as well, you can't dry/compress the buds like you could tea leaves, so it would take far too much volume per weight when freight is calculated, which makes container/shipping very expensive, and oils are not in high demand, nor is the gain from producing oil over raw buds worth mentioning.

Pretty much all of this makes it an economic dumpster fire for large-scale production- the market is much to small to make tea/tobacco plantation concepts profitable.

Unless we see it become a "everybody does it daily" product, I don't see any chance of this changing, and even then, local growing will still stay very profitable and viable (see "Craft beers")