Low-THC cannabis is booming in Switzerland

Switzerland’s market for legal cannabis with just 1 percent THC is taking off as producers are having trouble keeping up with demand and the number of registered retailers has grown significantly in the last year, according to a report from Reuters. Authorities expect sales upwards of $30 million this year, but admit even that is a conservative estimate.

KannaSwiss, a low-THC cannabis wholesaler, has quadrupled its staff to 20 since last year but co-founder Mr Corso Serra di Cassano said the company is still having trouble keeping up with orders.

“You feel like you should be high, because you have a body high, but your mind is completely clear,” di Cassano said in the report, describing the high produced by the low-potency products. “We’re really seeing the boom in the last month or two.”

Barbara Broers, vice-president of the Swiss Society of Addiction Medicine, said there could still be health risks, for example if growers use pest control chemicals. "We don't know what is in it. There are inadequate checks of really what is in the substance," Broers said.

Switzerland changed its laws in 2011 to let adults buy and use cannabis with up to 1 percent THC, the chemical compound that produces a high. But its money-making potential seems only to have been discovered late last year, officials said. "It started gradually last year, and then suddenly things went crazy in December 2016 and in 2017," said a spokesman for Switzerland's Customs Agency in Berne, which taxes the trade. Switzerland's experimentation with low-THC cannabis comes as several U.S. states have decriminalised or legalised pot.

The number of retailers registered to sell low-THC cannabis has risen to 140 from just a handful last year, the agency says.