The Summer Of Love – And Cannabis Reform

As the world opens up again, the idea of cannabis reform is clearly in the room like never before. Will the summer of 2021 be the tipping point for regional and federal reform?

Much has been made of the fact that people are coming out of their Covid shells and planning to party like it is 1999. Or 1921. Or even 1967.

There are clearly cultural, psychological, and political responses to being locked down, socially distanced, in a global pandemic, dead ahead.

Full and final cannabis reform, like other big and much-delayed topics such as climate change and sustainable economics, is now not a negotiation in terms of whether it will happen, but when.

The question is, in a new and more canna friendly world, what will change fundamentally, where, and what will just be inserted as a safe political giveaway in a world where most things are not working the way they used to.

European Reform

European states are beginning to move in a direction that is reminiscent of the United States circa 2014 – namely medical efficacy is basically in the room if not the most popular topic of federal legislators. But beyond this, the outliers, inevitably, are beginning to make the recreational discussion unavoidable, and in a way that cannot just be dismissed as “That is just the Dutch.”

This is likely to trickle through for the next several years as recreational markets are set up and tweaked, but it is highly significant.

North American Reform

Joe Biden may still want to duck the issue, but the United States is likely to face up to inevitability at least by the time the present administration goes up for re-election. The moving discussion in Europe, plus the maturation of the Canadian market (for starters) makes this almost inevitable.

Reform Elsewhere

With the entire debate moving in the US and Europe, other feeder states are likely to also begin to move the conversation – particularly in Asia. Australia and New Zealand may not move forward on anything other than seeding their own domestic medical market and lining up for exports to the rest of the world – but it is unlikely that things will slow down, down under either.