Morocco Legalizes Cannabis, Aims to Boost Economy and Curb Smuggling

Since 2018, Morocco has closed the border post in Ceuta, thus putting an end to smuggling, well before the closure of borders for health reasons, which has definitively consigned this atypical trade to the past. The legalization of cannabis should constitute an economic alternative for this border region, according to the latest report of the Moroccan Institute of Strategic Intelligence, which welcomes this "courageous, ambitious, almost revolutionary" decision.

The objective of this law on the legal use of cannabis, approved on May 26, 2021, is to regulate its cultivation and transform this plant into an opportunity for personal and collective development of the local population who were exploited by drug trafficking networks. This change will allow the industrialization of the area, generate jobs and create wealth in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic or textile sectors, the report points out.

This sovereign decision "puts an end to economic and social inequalities" and opens a "new page of human development in the Northern region," we can read in the document, which recalls that in 2019, some 40,000 producers were illegally cultivating around 55,000 hectares of cannabis, which earned them 19 billion euros, which allowed them to feed their families estimated between 90,000 and 140,000.

In addition to Morocco, countries such as Argentina, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, Poland, Switzerland or the United Kingdom have also authorized the use of cannabis for therapeutic purposes.