CANNAINVESTOR Magazine March / April 2017 | Page 94

Canada’s Peace Naturals has shipped cannabis to Pedanios GMBH, a Berlin distributor to 200 pharmacies in Germany, and Canada-based Aphria Inc. (CVE: APH) announced an agreement in November to export cannabis to MedLab Clinical in Australia.

An Israeli government committee, not content to sit idly by, gave a preliminary go-ahead for the export of medical cannabis a few days ago, on February 5th. While it could take months for the legislation to work its way through Israel’s parliament, it’s likely that the country’s cannabis cultivators could become formidable export competitors to the Canadians.

If Israel’s parliament approves the export of cannabis, Israel’s Ministry of Finance projects that the country’s cannabis cultivators are looking at a potential $250 to $300 million annual export market.

Job Growth in the State-Licensed Cannabis Industry

In many American states the legal cannabis industry is growing exponentially, adding tens of thousands of workers. As cannabis gains a wider acceptance by the American public, state-licensed cannabis businesses will continue to expand and increase the number of new hires.

The challenges the state-licensed cannabis industry faces, from tax policy to the difficulty or inability to access the banking system could easily be alleviated by action of the Trump administration or Congress. With policy changes, hundreds of thousands of new jobs could be created in state-licensed cannabis businesses.

Recent estimates indicate that legal, cannabis-related companies employ approximately 150,000 part-time and full-time workers nationally, with an estimated 30,000 of those in just one state, Colorado.

Moneywatch compared the 150,000 employees of state-licensed cannabis businesses to the number of flight attendants, which totaled 108,0000, librarians which totaled 131,000 and web developers, which totaled 127,000.

Voters in California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada approved recreational, adult-use cannabis in November. As recreational cannabis businesses are established in these new adult-use states, hundreds of thousands of new jobs will be added.

94