Don't miss the cannabis bus

Marijuana is experiencing an international resurgence, with countries lifting restrictions on the medicinal and recreational use of cannabis. North America is leading the charge with Canadian and US cannabis companies concluding a series of buyouts in Europe. Canada has legitimised marijuana at the federal level, while the US is a patchwork of approvals across states. Europe broadly follows the same pattern with widespread approval for medicinal marijuana and a slim list of countries permitting recreational use. US cannabis companies have received a boost from Trump's decriminalisation of the drug. But they cannot plan nationwide growth in the absence of federal approval. Their strategy involves scaling up in states where the plant is legal and by gaining entry to like-minded overseas markets.

The rising chorus of ayes for cannabis will be shaped by how the industry sells it. There are parallels with the alcohol and tobacco industries that don't have a comfortable relationship with public health regulators. In the case of cannabis, there could be a tendency to overstate its benefits. Risks of overdosing and over-targeting are as strong as with tobacco and alcohol. Yet, that could affect growth of the market, with regulators, although no longer in blind opposition to cannabis, still wary of its cultural consequences.

India, late to the ban-cannabis party, shouldn't miss the revival bus. The country has the longest exposure to cannabis and had structured a social response to it that allowed both medicinal and recreational use. These were overridden by international pressure, led by the US, in 1985. India should quickly regain its equilibrium over cannabis and tap into the emerging global market. Since the global M&A activity is being driven by venture capital-backed US pharma startups, the strategy can be replicated by Indian firms. The repository of therapies in Ayurveda involving cannabis offers a jump-start in medical research that gains from Indian pharma companies acquiring scale in the international market.