The FTI Consulting/Global Go Annual Report on Cannabis Law & Markets is a must-have for cannabis professionals and investors.  The 400-plus-page report brings together leading cannabis lawyers and consultants throughout the world to provide companies and investors a comprehensive market-by-market briefing on how regulatory regimes are impacting the nascent legal cannabis market.

While many consumer products and services struggled through COVID-19 quarantines in 2020, the global cannabis market grew 42% to $21.7 billion, according to The Brightfield Group whose market-size estimates are featured in the report. The reason: Legal cannabis markets grow just as fast as regulators allow them to, and major strides were taken on the legalization front in recent years.

Then, in 2020, regulators almost everywhere deemed cannabis retail an essential service, in many cases allowing consumer-pleasing new services like on-line ordering, home delivery and curbside pick-up. New markets are opening up and regulators in existing markets are moving to make legal cannabis more widely available.

But where are the best opportunities opening up? That’s the question this report answers, through detailed analysis of the legal landscape in the most advanced markets in North America and around the world:

Among the many important regulatory insights in the report (whose regulatory rundowns are current as of year-end 2020):

·         How the supply chain works in different markets, from Canada to the US states to countries around the world.

·         The trade-offs between limited licensing markets where growth rates are suppressed by lack of access, as opposed to liberally licensed markets with better growth but where prices are suppressed by competitive pressures.

·         Profitability for manufacturers is maximized at an optimal level of product category diversification, which can directly depend on regulatory rules as to available product types.

·         The impact marketing and advertising restrictions are having in Canada, the US, and elsewhere.

·         Critical issues in managing ethics and compliance risk in cannabis.

·         The implications of the growing importance of EU-GMP certification to Europe’s medical-only markets.

·         The likely impact of the rescheduling of cannabis by the UN’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs in December.

The groundbreaking report features market-by-market briefings by the cannabis practice leads at the partner companies: Global Go, FTI Consulting, Zuber Lawler, and Borden Ladner Gervais (BLG). In addition to the top-line forecasts of the US and Canadian markets from the Brightfield Group, Global Go Analytics has compiled an unprecedented collection of government data from California to Maine, Canada to Mexico, in order to spotlight the impact regulations are having on the key drivers of industry success: patient counts, number of active licenses, store locations, cultivation sites and the like.