You may not have considered this before, but with its traceability combined with pseudonymity, blockchain is the perfect technology for the simultaneously emerging cannabis industry. 

     HealthMed.org states that blockchain technology has the potential to "push the cannabis industry to the next level," by allowing users to track the entire manufacturing process from start to finish, as well as create a valuable database for supply chain monitoring, by connecting producers, packagers, and delivery services. 

    Essentially, we have two present day issues in the cannabis industry that blockchain technology absolutely has the capabilities to solve, if not at least present a very viable solution. 

  Production to Consumption.

   Obviously, cannabis is not the type of medicine that can be easily created, distributed, and sold by the same entity. No pharmaceutical company will ever have a monopoly on cannabis, nor is it likely that that companies who sell currently sell cannabis will own every bit of the production line anytimE soon. That's not the way the cannabis community wants it. The cannabis industry is currently a diverse ecosystem of geneticists, growers, distribution companies and store fronts, just to name a few of the entities who actually touch the product. And this complex process is further complicated by essentially brand new regulations in a brand new market. Prior to blockchain, accurately recording and making these transactions retraceable would be a daunting, if not partially impossible task.

 Genetic Diversity/Utility.

   Ok, so even if you've never used cannabis, you've probably heard some of the names of various strains, whether classics from the early days or the newest and dopest dope. Experts say there are probably about 700 strains out there- hogwash. Thousands can be found on online forums alone.

  Let's have a little lesson in plant genetics. Let's say as a grower, you take two strains- "Kush", and "Glue", and breed them. You'll end up with quite a few seeds, which you may call, "StickyIcky" seeds. Now, technically, all of these StickyIcky offspring of Kush and Glue will have varying qualities, like brothers and sisters from the same parents. Growers need to then grow all of these seeds- after isolating the females and any dud seeds, growers typically end up with about 50 phenotypes, which will be named StickyIcky #1, StickyIcky #2, StickyIcky #3, and so on to #50. From these #50 phenotypes, one, none, or all of these may be chosen to continue reproduction, in which #50 more phenotypes could be created from StickIcky #2 crossed with Flight to make StickyFlight #1-50 as well as StickyIcky #4 that will he recrossed with Glue to make SuperStickyIcky#4........Do you see how fast this gets confusing from just 2-3 crossbreeds? And this is literally happening all over the world as we speak, like 2-3 crossbreeds a day around the world easy. 

   There is NO official database for cannabis strains. With the information you've just seen, and experts saying there's about 700 strains available, you can see how crappy actual data can be for this subject. Not just for the strain names, that's trivial- but primarily for the genetic and medicinal properties. Which phenotypes grow best in which region? Which are best for rare conditions? This information is constantly evolving; with the potential of cannabis genetics, there may be some medicinal remedies hidden in the cannabis gene pool that we haven't even found yet! Unfortunatley, any answers to these questions come from arcane books published by the cannabis pioneers of the hayday, or unverified websites/ info. 

  Cannabis needs blockchain. I'm there.