Cannabis has far to go to be the new finance

Nicholas Morland, chief executive of Tenacious Labs, said that Jersey – and we shall read Guernsey into that – had a window to grab a slice of the premium end of the medicinal cannabis market, but the opening would not be around for long.

He called for the island(s) to embrace ambition quickly and decisively before bigger competitors took a foothold in the market.

Another industry figure, Dr Charlotte Cocks, who has joined the Medicann clinics across the islands as a GP specialist in the use of medicinal cannabis, also says the islands are well ahead of the UK in this market and leading the way in Europe.

Only a few months ago it was announced that Guernsey business can apply to cultivate cannabis for medicinal uses, following agreement with the UK Home Office, and the drive to build the medicinal cannabis industry seems significant, and the evidence of demand is very clear.

In the first year of the availability of cannabis imports for medicinal treatment, there were more than 3,000 licences issued, and, on current trends, we can expect to see that to comfortably double within the next 12 months.

So hopes are high for the industry, but talk about cannabis becoming the ‘new finance’ are surely wide of the mark at this stage.

One of the key aims of the sector is to diversify the growth of the island’s economy and to become the next modern advancement of the island’s growing industry, with cannabis products developed in a highly regulated environment, in accordance with global standards.

Yet there is much still not widely known or understood about the industry, its scope and size, what it is, and what it does.

We can’t have a debate about a legal cannabis industry without the illegal side being raised.

We're aware that our deputies seem to have a mixture of views.

While cannabis surely has some potential for Guernsey, it has still to prove that it is the new horticulture, yet alone the new finance industry.