Cannabis industry expert Deepak Anand offers his take on the state of the cannabis sector. Anand highlights the progress and growth cannabis has achieved in Asia. He reveals that India and Thailand are advancing on the cultivation front, with Thailand consider cultivation licenses for medical purposes and India granting cultivation licenses for domestic use and export. Anand notes that some Chinese companies have started to export CBD extracts. He discusses the significance of the Japanese market for LPs, as the country is a huge CBD importer for human and animal consumption. Anand provides his analysis of the Ontario retail lottery process and emphasizes both the limitations of the lottery system and the potential for strict enforcement regarding the non-transfer of licenses.

James West:   Hey, Deepak, how are you?

Deepak Anand: Good, James, how are you?

James West:   Great, thanks! I hear you’ve been travelling the world helping people obtain cannabis nirvana on a legitimate basis.

Deepak Anand: One country at a time, James.

James West:   Awesome. So tell us about what’s going on in the world; give us a sense of the pace of de-prohibition in countries that we’re probably not following so closely as Canada and the US.

Deepak Anand: Yeah, I just got back from Thailand and from India, James, and there’s certainly a lot happening in those two countries. India has issued some cultivation licenses for sort of all purposes: R&D, exports, domestic cultivation, and there’s certainly some very good opportunities in that country, particularly on the product formulation side.

And then Thailand, most people may be aware, recently are looking at legislating cultivation in Thailand, you know, including granting licenses to be able to grow cannabis there for medical purposes. So definitely, you know, the Asian markets seem to be really heating up. We’re seeing a few licensed producers get into those markets, but none of the big guys yet in there. We’re certainly seeing Bedrocan out of the Netherlands make a lot of moves early on into those pockets, so that something we’re watching very closely.

James West:   Sure. You bet. Have you heard anything coming out of China? And the reason I ask this is because at some point I’m expecting to see a press release that says XYZ Corp partners with China XYZ Corp to create the first billion-square-foot marijuana grow operation with an average cost of production of $0.02 a gram, or something like that. Is there any sign of broad de-prohibition in China? I know it’s sort of selectively legal; some of the CBD products in areas of China.

Deepak Anand: Yeah, nothing broadly in terms of a Federal perspective in China. There’s certainly a lot of CBD isolate coming out of China, a lot of manufacturers in China, you know, sort of exporting CBD, bringing in CBD isolate to countries like the UK there’s a number of CBD manufacturers that have licenses to be able to import those products in from China. But nothing sort of on the scale that we’re seeing in Thailand or in