Morocco: plans to legalize cannabis unveiled

As announced yesterday, the Moroccan government will tomorrow study a proposal to legalize cannabis. In the meantime, the broad outlines of the bill have been unveiled by Moroccan media outlet 360.

According to the project, A specialized national agency will oversee the purchase and sale of the plant to companies that can use it for medical purposes and for domestic and international processing.

Cannabis cultivation zones will also be demarcated in «six areas across the Kingdom», a priori located in the north of the country, a historically cannabis-producing area. Recreational cultivation and use will remain prohibited in Morocco.

Legalization's first entry into the legislative circuit

Until now, the legalization of cannabis in Morocco has been a political issue of interest above all to the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), which tabled a legalization project back in 2015.

The proposed law remained a dead letter for a long time, until the government announced in early 2020 that would have agreed to study the proposal then would have retracted.

In the middle of last year, the Special Commission on the Development Model (CSMD), mandated to seek solutions to accelerate Morocco's development, had advocated legalizing cannabis in the Kingdom, judging that up to now, the crackdown on cannabis had not worked.

On the subject of therapeutics, Morocco had also voted in favour of the declassification of cannabis in international conventions, in this case the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.