ATHENS – Looking for cash everywhere to offset a nearly eight-year-long economic and austerity crisis, Greece’s ruling Radical Left SYRIZA-led coalition is speeding plans to allow the growth of marijuana for medical purposes.
Pot is still unlawful for recreational use, but if possession of a small amount is found to be for personal use, it is decriminalized in court. Individuals are arrested, although rarely convicted by court although possession of large quantities can bring prison sentences.
Now though, the Leftist-led government, whose backers include ranks favoring marijuana, is re-accelerating planned implementation of a 2017 law legalizing medical use of cannabis, the financial news agency Bloomberg said in a report.
A project to cultivate, process and export medical marijuana in Veroia, in the fertile north of the country, shows how Greece sees cannabis as a possible growth industry for the country, which has a warm, dry climate similar to California. New legislation could make the plan a reality as soon as next summer, the report said.
The Veroia site will create more than 2,000 jobs in the next two to three years, Georgios Zafeiris, Chief Executive at Golden Greece, the company responsible for coordinating the project’s group of 10 investors from countries including Canada, Kazakhstan, Poland and Israel told the agency.
The first round of investment is seen at 400 million euros ($497.03 million,) rising to more than 1.5 billion euros ($1.86 billion) with reports some 80 percent of the jobs in areas such as cultivation, trading and transport could go to Greeks.
“In Greece, we’re not looking at bringing people in from other areas that have cannabis experience,” said Michael Blady, one of the investors involved in the Veroia project. “We’re going to train as many people as we need and we’re going to start our own culture here.”
While initial plans will focus on extraction, processing and packaging of medical marijuana, investors are also looking into an eventual recreational cannabis market in the country, provided the government opts for fuller legalisation in the future, according to Blady.
SYRIZA will post its pot bill on a government website to let the public give its opinion although the party wants legalization as fast as possible.
“There’s significant interest by the investor community to exploit the possibilities of the new legal framework for medicinal cannabis in Greece,” Agriculture Minister Evangelos Apostolou said.
He added that the government wants to assist any investment project that could help boost the economy despite adamant opposition to any foreign businesses operating in Greece from some hardliners in SYRIZA, a stance that some analysts said is a big obstacle for the government to overcome to lure more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).
The Veroia project’s backers said it could be a bulwark against economic downturns and any changes in government with SYRIZA trailing badly in polls to the major opposition New Democracy Conservatives after Tsipras reneged on anti-austerity promises.
In november, 2017, Bloomberg said that marijuana investors were looking at Greece’ sunny climate and atmosphere to grow the cannabis for medical purposes and bring some critical cash to the starved economy.
Growers expressed interest at putting than 1.5 billion euros ($1.74 billion) into projects to build greenhouse parks for the cultivation and manufacture of cannabis, Apostolou said then in an interview.
That would give Greece a share of a global market the government says could be worth 200 billion euros ($235.97 billion) in the next 10 years.
A single campus of 12 to 15 cannabis greenhouses could create 400 jobs, according to a task force preparing a draft bill to legalize medical cannabis in Greece, the report said, a miniscule amount in a country with the highest jobless rate in the European Union.
“Thousands of Greek households with family members suffering from serious illnesses like cancer and Parkinson’s disease will be able to get drugs produced right here, under World Health Organization guidelines,” he said.
credit:thenationalherald.com
