Cannabis policies trigger
64 targets
out of 169, across
15 SDGs
as well as numerous other global health, environment, human rights, trade, labour, and drug policy agendas
From the introduction:
Cannabis, per se, is neither a problem nor a pressing issue. It is just a plant, yet interwoven into a million problems, and another million pressing issues. This makes the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and its million topics covered, a relevant matrix to analyse Cannabis and its policies.
Because of its characteristics, widespread cultivation and use, and the diversity of its applications, we found that the Cannabis sativa L. plant and its related policies directly trigger at least 64 of the 169 targets among 15 out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda.
Sustainability and Cannabis policies also echo 75 of the 104 operational recommendations of another important policy toolkit adopted by global consensus in 2016, the outcome document of the ‘UNGASS 2016’, the 30th special session of the UN General Assembly on drug policies (A/RES/S-30/1), which noted that “efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and to effectively address the world drug problem are complementary and mutually reinforcing”.
Downloads
English version
Sustainable Cannabis Policy Toolkit
Aligning Cannabis and hemp policy with the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda
Czech version
Sada nástrojů pro udržitelnou konopnou politiku
Sladění politiky v oblasti konopí setého a technického konopí s Agendou pro udržitelný rozvoj 2030
Spanish version
Cannabis Sostenible: Manual de Políticas Públicas
Alinear las políticas del Cannabis y del cáñamo con la Agenda 2030 de desarrollo sostenible
Contents & sections
Introduction
Definitions
Acronyms
How to use the toolkit
Goal 1: No poverty
- Continuing to criminalize Cannabis-related activities fosters poverty
- Helping people transition to the legal market
- A legal market based on fair trade & ethics
- Recognition and protection of traditional areas of cultivation, knowledge and genetics + Right to seeds
- Fiber & resin: diversifying harvest outputs
- The urgency of discontinuing eradication policies & the right to land
- Alternative Development to assist farmers in transitioning to the legal market
Goal 2: Zero hunger
- Cannabis as a source of food, foodstuff and food complements
- Protecting the genetic diversity of “hemp”
Goal 3: Health & well-being
- Herbal Cannabis and cannabinoid products: diverse tools for practitioners
- Cannabis is also a traditional medicine: recognize it and protect it!
- Medicinal Cannabis as a potential tool for the cessation of tobacco, opioids, alcohol, and benzodiazepines
- Unleashing medical research
- Adult use or the need for 3HR: Human Rights, Harm Reduction and Honest Research
- Driving under the influence of Cannabis products
- Cannabis-based foodstuff for health
Goal 4: Quality education
- Education for health & Cannabis harm reduction
- Research on, and with Cannabis, in all disciplines
- Training the legal Cannabis sector
Goal 5: Gender equality
- The disproportionate impact of prohibition on women
- Access to healthcare
- A gender-specific focus to female adult use
- Female leadership in the legal Cannabis industry
Goal 7: Affordable & clean energy
- Cannabis to produce and store electricity
- Cannabis agriculture: Promoting a sustainable & low carbon footprint
Goal 8: Decent work & economic growth
- The inherent insecurity of illegal labour
- Tackling forced or compulsory labour
- Stigma = unemployment
- Job creation, via a diversely-shaped sector and sound tax policies
- Jobs for all, in villages & cities
- Legal Cannabis to tackle depopulation
- Removing banking barriers, providing financial support
- Cannabis and tourism vs. Cannabis for tourism
- The multiple impacts of collective intellectual property rights
Goal 9: Industry, innovation & infrastructures
- Cannabis for plastics and composite materials
- Cannabis for concrete and paints
- Cannabis for carbon sequestration
Goal 10: Reduced inequalities
- Prohibition is incompatible with Goal 10
- Ending “drug courts” and sui generis Justice systems
- Equality of opportunities: avoiding barriers to entry in the legal industry
- Amnesty, expungement, remedy and reparations
- Monitoring racism and discriminations in Cannabis policies
- Cannabis social clubs: a pioneering social innovation
- Towards a multimodal model of regulation: integrating social innovation in Cannabis policies
Goal 11: Sustainable cities & communities
- Yes, your local weed dealer has skills and popular knowledge
- Assisting the transition for historical areas of production or retail
- Geographical Indications and Appellations of Origin to protect the cultural and natural heritage
- Cultivation in urban areas as a lever for greener cities
Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production
- Hemp products as alternative green materials
- Moving towards a producer-to-consumer model
- Rethinking agriculture with hemp
- Moving towards responsible uses of Cannabis products
Goal 13: Climate action
- A transversal contribution to the global action on climate change
- Towards operational ethnobotanical relationships between Homo sapiens and Cannabis sativa
Goal 15: Ecosystems & life on land
- When repression pushed farmers to grow in remote fragile ecosystems
- The illicit market won’t follow good environmental practices
- Towards a multi-crop agriculture including Cannabis
- Cannabis crops for the phytoremediation of contaminated soil and water
- Hemp should have been legal worldwide since 1961
- Prioritizing rural, craft, small-scale, community-held and traditional farmers
- Farmers’ and peasants’ rights for biodiversity
- Synthetic Biology, GMOs and dysbiosynthetic phytocannabinoids
- Applying the principles of BioTrade to the Cannabis and hemp economy
Goal 16: Peace, justice, human rights & strong institutions
- Prohibition vs People
- Demilitarizing drug control and legal Cannabis, training the police to human rights standards
- Rule of law, proportionality of sentencing, and right to remedy & reparations
- Social justice, reintegration, retroactivity
- Regulation to reduce corruption
- Correcting mistaken perceptions among the mass media
- A contemporary approach to the conflicts between Human Rights and Drug Policy
Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals
- Coherence with international Human Rights obligations
- Coherence with the Right to health: Nothing on earth justifies barriers to access for therapeutic purposes
- Involving affected populations and civil society stakeholders in the design of future policies
- Shifting the focus from police to health
- Legal Cannabis to fund the transition to a sustainable world
- After 2030: merging the UN plan of action on drugs with the global development agenda
Conclusions
Indexes
Further reading
Cannabis: the Future is Culture— UNESCO’s "Mondiacult" World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development
Cannabis: A Plant Without Borders. Cultural Diagnosis, One Hundred Years After Its Prohibition — Contribution to UNESCO 2025
Joint Contribution of the Cannabis Embassy for the UN CESCR's General Comment on Drug policies & economic, social and cultural rights
International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy (2016)
Videos of the International Cannabis Policy Conference
