Morocco Considers Expanding Legal Cannabis Cultivation, Council Proposes Reforms

In its 2020 annual report, the CESE presented the issues related to cannabis cultivation and proposed solutions to develop the regions, protect its population and make it an economic hub for cannabis and its derivatives. Nine recommendations were presented.

1. Calm the social climate in order to turn the page on legal proceedings against cultivators and their families. Consultation mechanisms between the State, local authorities and civil society in the region should be set up, in order to build, together, a future of development and progress for the benefit of all.

2. Design and implement an emergency program to develop road infrastructure and small civil engineering works in order to open up the cannabis cultivation areas and facilitate the development of economic activity. This opening up of rural areas includes access to basic social services, education, vocational training and health. The same applies to telecommunications networks that need to be upgraded to enable the digital opening up of these areas.

3. Design and implement a special program for the development of income and job-generating economic and social activities in order to reduce the causes of social tensions and diversify the population’s sources of income, which are heavily focused on cannabis.

4. Build an integrated therapeutic and industrial cannabis sector by capitalizing, locally, on cannabis through the joint development of plant production and processing, with, on the one hand, the farmer/producers of the plant who will be able to carry out certain transformations of the plant and sell derived products and, on the other hand, processing and extracting industries, capable of going as far as pharmaceutical composition or any other high value-added product.

5. Provide specific incentives to attract national and international investments and know-how to the region, in cannabis processing activities.

6. Ensure the preservation of the environment, particularly in terms of water resource management, protection of wooded areas and soils;

7. Develop a national cannabis economy open to technological know-how and outlets necessary for significant production. This also means that Moroccan scientific research oriented towards the plant and its transformation should constitute an important pillar of this economy.

8. Encourage the organization of cultivators into cooperatives in order to facilitate the establishment and obtaining of exclusive rights for cultivation areas, varieties or products from this agriculture.

9. Base the sector on research and innovation to create innovative products by taking advantage of the characteristics of Moroccan cannabis, and set up a mechanism for coordination, monitoring and promotion of research and innovation for the transformation of cannabis.