The US state of California, the fifth largest economy in the world, legalised cannabis on 1 January 2018. Although other US states had already created a regulated cannabis market before California, the Golden State intends to grow its sales market for cannabis, which already was the largest in the world, even faster. Currently, the annual sales of medicinal cannabis, which was legalised in California in 1996, is set to reach $7 billion this year.
Since 2009, cannabis has been the best-selling agricultural product in California, which has the highest population of all American states. Regulating recreational cannabis became a societal necessity when the prohibited plant wasn’t purely cultivated and sold for medicinal reasons any longer.
It was a public secret that the market for medicinal cannabis was increasingly progressing into a grey area, as many Californians aspired to the status of cannabis patient in order to indemnify themselves from prosecution for possession, consumption or growing cannabis for personal use.
For…