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Morocco aims to boost legal cannabis farming and tap a global boom
Legal cannabis covers 14,300 acres in Morocco’s Rif Mountains, but illegal cultivation still dominates with 67,000 acres, posing ongoing challenges for integration.
- Last year, Morocco expanded legal cannabis cultivation and integrated longtime growers like Mohamed Makhlouf into licensed cooperatives in the Rif Mountains near Bab Berred.
- Since a 2021 law legalized certain cultivation, regulators enacted 2022 measures to lift small-scale farmers out of poverty and integrate the Rif Mountains, while King Mohammed VI pardoned over 4,800 growers in 2024.
- Official data shows the agency issued licenses last year to more than 3,371 licensed growers and recorded nearly 4,200 tons of legal cannabis, while the Biocannat cooperative buys from roughly 200 small farmers.
- Protests in Taounate highlighted unpaid promised payments after cooperatives failed to pay local farmers, while black-market demand remains high and illegal cannabis networks persist.
- Observers warn the legal market remains too small to absorb the hundreds of thousands in the Rif, and the Global Institute Against Transnational Organized Crime said the industry is 'more one of coexistence of both markets than a decisive transition.
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35 Articles
Associated Press News+34 Reposted by 34 other sources
Morocco aims to boost legal cannabis farming and tap a global boom
Morocco has long been one of the world's top exporters of cannabis and in 2022 it became the first Muslim-majority country to legalize certain forms of cultivation.
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Total News Sources35
Leaning Left17Leaning Right3Center10Last UpdatedBias Distribution57% Left
Bias Distribution
- 57% of the sources lean Left
57% Left
L 57%
C 33%
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