Fair Trade cannabis: a road map for meeting the socio-economic needs and interests of small and traditional growers

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/jfairtrade.2.1.0027
• Published date: 01 June 2020
• Date: 01 June 2020
• Pages: 27-34
• Author: Sylvia Kay,Martin Jelsma,David Bewley-Taylor
• Subject Matter: cannabis,sustainable development,human rights,market strategy,cooperatives,war on drugs,drug policy,Fair Trade

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Fair Trade cannabis: a road map for meeting the

socio-economic needs and interests of small and traditional growers

Sylvia Kay, Martin Jelsma and David Bewley-Taylor1

Sylvia Kay is Project Officer working at the Agrarian and Environmental Justice programme of the

Transnational Institute (Amsterdam). Her work focuses on issues around land and food politics, natural

resource governance, rural development and agricultural investment. More recently she has been engaged

in debates around drugs and development, and the prospects for fair(er) trade cannabis.

Martin Jelsma is Director of the Drugs and Democracy programme at the Transnational Institute

(Amsterdam) and Senior Research Associate at the Global Drug Policy Observatory (Swansea University),

working on links between drugs policy, conflict, human rights and development, often in collaboration

with small farmers of cannabis, coca and opium.

David Bewley-Taylor is Professor of International Relations and Public Policy, and founding director of the

Global Drug Policy Observatory, Swansea University, UK. He has collaborated with, and produced policy

reports for, a range of drug policy organisations beyond academia and at present is a Senior Associate of

the International Drug Policy Consortium and a Research Fellow of the Transnational Institute’s Drugs and

Democracy Programme.

Abstract

Policy changes over the past five years have dramatically reshaped the global cannabis

market, opening up legal markets for medical cannabis and, increasingly, also for adult,

non-medical use. Despite the fact that these shifts look set to bring a clear range of benefits

in terms of health and human rights, there is concern over the many for-profit cannabis

companies from the Global North that are aggressively competing to capture the licit

spaces, squeezing out small and traditional cannabis farmers from the Global South. If

the construction of the global cannabis prohibition regime was an historic mistake, then a

transition towards a legally regulated market that concentrates profits in a handful of Big

Pharma, Ag, Tobacco and Cannabis companies, while locking out small-scale farmers in the

Global South, only serves to further this damaging legacy. The focus of Fair Trade cannabis

must be to empower small and traditional producers in the cannabis trade, based on a

number of first order principles, market strategies and public policies. Crucially, growers

must be enabled to organise amongst themselves and forge coalitions with other actors in

order to advocate for appropriate frameworks and interventions.

Keywords: cannabis; sustainable development; human rights; market strategy; co-

operatives; war on drugs; drug policy; Fair Trade

Cannabis is the most widely consumed drug in the world, with 188 million people reportedly having used

cannabis at least once in the year leading up to 2017.2 This reflects also its widespread cultivation. While even

1 The authors are grateful to the comments provided by two anonymous reviewers whose careful reading of the draft greatly improved the argumentation

and detail. Any remaining errors are our own.

2 United Nations (2019). World Drug Report 2019. Vienna: United Nations Oce on Drugs and Crime (p. 11).