First regulate cannabis cultivation. Licence it after

Nepal might license cannabis cultivation. The science of what that demands must lead, not follow.

As a research fellow at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, I am studying what cannabis does to the heart, the metabolism and the brain, alongside a team of leading researchers in cannabis and psychedelic science. This background gives me a unique responsibility and specialised perspective on this issue if Nepal moves towards licensing cannabis cultivation for medicinal and industrial purposes. I have spent years watching and learning cannabis programmes succeed and fail across Asia and the Americas to say clearly: The scientific and legal architecture must be in place before the first license is issued, not retrofitted after the first crisis. What follows are the irreducible requirements.