Taliban announce agreement to grow cannabis in Afghanistan

The Taliban regime in Afghanistan announced on Tuesday that it had contracted a company called Cpharm to grow and manufacture cannabis products.

Social media posts by the Afghan Ministry of Internal Affairs indicate that the company, Cpharm, had agreed to make an investment of over $400 million to set up a cannabis production plant in the country.

The project «will soon be officially launched and hundreds of people will have job opportunities», the ministry said in a tweet.

Earlier, Qari Saeed Khosty, a spokesman for the Taliban, who took over the Afghan government this summer after the withdrawal of the US army, had provided details in a Twitter feed on the supposed agreement.

«Yesterday, officials from the Ministry of Interior's counter-narcotics department met with a representative of the company (Cpharm),» he said, according to a translation. «The company wants to build a cannabis processing plant in Afghanistan, which will create all cannabis products.».

«In Afghanistan, only this company will be legally contracted,» he said. «By setting up this factory, the Cpharm company will use the cannabis produced in Afghanistan to make spices and a kind of cream.»

The Taliban spokesman added that the contract «will create jobs for many citizens.»

Unexpectedly, an Australian company of the same name had to deny any involvement in the project after numerous press articles falsely linked the Taliban announcement to Cpharm Australia.

«We became aware overnight of numerous press reports claiming that Cpharm in Australia was involved in a deal with the Taliban to be involved in supplying cannabis in a cream,» said a press release.

«We don't manufacture or supply anything. We provide a medical consultancy service to the pharmaceutical industry in Australia. We have no products listed on the’Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. We have no connection with cannabis or the Taliban. We have no idea where the Taliban press release came from and would like to assure everyone that it should not be linked to Cpharm Pty Ltd Australia. »

After a little research, however, it turns out that the Cpharm in question is rather German (http://www.cpharm.de/de/index.html). The company has not yet answered our questions. We will update the article as necessary.