PHOTO BY MARKA/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES
Smoke a joint, save a life?
Quite possibly (though YOU don’t really deserve any of the credit), as the RAW Foundation, the philanthropic and entirely self-funded arm of RAW Rolling Papers, recently helped finish the construction of 10 clean water wells in the Ethiopian district of Wondo Genet Woreda, located about four hours south of the capital, Addis Ababa.
Access to fresh water is a common problem in Ethiopia, where the population number is just under 100 million. According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, 43 percent of the population does not have access to safe water, and 17 percent of childhood deaths are associated with a waterborne illness.
Residents of the Wondo Genet Woreda district were walking upwards of two hours to collect water from unpolluted sources, only able to bring back as much water as they could carry. This took a huge toll on the district: many students, most at a young age, had to miss class or dropped out of school entirely to help their families with the water walks.
Additionally, closer sources, such as unprotected wells and polluted rivers or springs, are breeding grounds for bacteria due to overcrowding and drought conditions. Despite plans to develop 80 new wells for clean water throughout the district, the district water office’s budget has prevented construction.
To help, the RAW Foundation—overseen personally by RAW’s founder, Joshua Kesselman—provided the funds for the construction of 10 new wells ($70,000) to provide fresh water to 3,350 people.
And that’s not all: Over 550 male and female household heads will receive training in sanitation and hygiene awareness, hopefully helping to cut down on common waterborne diseases like typhoid and diarrhea.
This is not the RAW Foundation’s first charitable investment in Africa.
Their work has included creating a water filtration project in the Congo, sponsoring an orphanage in Bali, Indonesia, and building or repairing numerous water wells in Ethiopia and Uganda. The biggest project the foundation has undergone was helping Mother Theresa’s main hospital in the capital by installing a large-scale water distribution system, then doing the same for a second hospital by installing a water filtration system.
PATENT WARS REACH THE CANNABIS INDUSTRY: HOW DO YOU REGISTER A PLANT?
This article was originally published on Benzinga and adapted for HIGH MES.
New Frontier Data, one of the leading analytics firms in the cannabis industry, recently published a 400-page research note titled, “The Cannabis Industry Annual Report,” looking at the state of legal marijuana markets for 2017.
The extensive and impressively thorough document goes into a wide array of topics, from market growth projections and job creation, to legislative activity and international markets.
Fortunately, I had a chance to talk to the firm’s founder and CEO, Giadha Aguirre De Carcer, and shoot a few questions her way about the report. However, with so much information available, I did not know where to start, so I decided to ask Giadha which topic she found especially interesting or unique.
“There was one topic that just blew me away!” she said, pointing to the fact that the cannabis plant had been registered in the U.S. Patent Office. There are two approved patents that could potential cover more than 50 percent of the strains in the market, the report explained.
“That’s the equivalent of patenting potatoes,” Giadha said. “To me, it’s just mind boggling. This just proves the abysmal lack of knowledge and understanding around these very unique plants.”
It’s important to understand that not all patents registered around the cannabis plant make zero sense.
Among the almost 400 patents that have been ?¬?led in relation to cannabis, marijuana, CBD or THC, there are some that seem to adequately protect intellectual property, like techniques for extracting oil or specific infusion formulations. However, patenting the plant itself, or a few characteristics present in a majority of the strains out there, is where the problem lies.
What has happened is comparable to someone basically saying, “if a potato has more than 75 calories per 100 grams, and more than 25 percent vitamin C, then you have to pay a royalty to grow it or sell it.”
Giadha, then, went into the economic impact of patents.
If the patents for the cannabis plant remain in effect, anyone producing or retailing marijuana will see a negative impact of 10 to 15 percent on his or her margins, she explained.
Actually, cultivators’ margins have been shrinking over the past couple of years, she added. All a patent would do is further “narrow down the number of stakeholders in the cannabis industry and erode the growth of the industry.”
“Furthermore, a patent expert has informed New Frontier Data that similar patents have been filed in Europe, suggesting that Biotech Institute is in the process of accumulating worldwide rights to a large swath of the cannabis plant ecosystem in anticipation of prohibition laws being lifted in the U.S. and key international markets,” the report concluded.
The world is still finding out a lot of things about the cannabis plant, but, as the industry advances, we’ll need to address the patents issue to keep the space inclusive.
