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Licensing

Policy reform and the international future of Moroccan Cannabis production

Policy reform and the international future of Moroccan Cannabis production

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International Journal of Drug PolicySpecial issue on Cannabis Policy Reforms in Africa: Dynamics, Contexts and Futures, edited by C. Rusenga, G, Klantschnig., S. Howell, N. Carrier, M.-G. Loglo. online on 24 May 2025.

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy

Chargé de recherche au CNRS (Prodig)CNRS Research Fellow (Prodig)

Abstract:

In 2023, Morocco produced the first legal Cannabis crop of any illegal hashish-producing country, only three years after it legalised the cultivation of Cannabis for medical and industrial purposes. Nevertheless, as the country continues to amend its regulatory framework and economic policies, numerous questions and uncertainties persist regarding the success of its strategy for the export of Cannabis products and the evolution of its domestic consumer market.This current study details and explains how Morocco has advantageously legalised what it calls “licit uses of cannabis”, notably by not referring to hemp, but also by making the strategic decision not to adopt an overall tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) threshold. This study also addresses key agricultural technicalities, such as how higher legal THC levels benefit cannabidiol (CBD) yields and how this directly impacts economic competitiveness, as well as how legal rules and details are structuring a new and rapidly changing global legal cannabinoid market. This study goes beyond the case of Morocco by considering what diverse and evolving international legislations mean for potential future Moroccan exports, depending on how CBD is viewed and regulated in different countries, whether as a pharmaceutical, a wellness product, or a food supplement.The study concludes that while the Moroccan authorities have quickly and pragmatically adapted their regulations, both at the production and consumption level, the future of Morocco’s legal Cannabis industry remains largely dependent on local and global environmental and economic factors that will influence its development and viability.

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Why the concept of terroir matters for drug cannabis production

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2022 / GeoJournal.

This article questions how the concepts of terroir and landrace are relevant for the drug cannabis industry at a time when cannabis legalisation and its associated ‘‘green rush’’ pose a growing threat to both the genetic and cultural diversity that is associated with historical small cannabis farming. The article draws on a multidisciplinary approach based on both extensive secondary sources and primary research.
A large and detailed definition work first informs what terroir and landrace are and most especially what they have in common, from the typicity of their end products, to how they owe their existence to geographic remoteness and isolation, and to how tradition and change (or modernity) affect their development and conservation. Defining and connecting terroirs and landraces in historical, anthropological, environmental, and of course chemical terms, makes it possible to determine how cannabis terroirs compare with and differ from other terroirs and plants, based on the rare dual qualities of the plant (being both a food and a drug) but also, given the illegality of its cultivation, on the specific territorial characteristics of its production areas, notably their geographic remoteness and isolation, their politico-territorial control deficits, etc.
The article concludes that acknowledging and protecting cannabis terroirs and landraces matters because it favours the conservation and the promotion of a biological, cultural, and sensorial diversity that has endured illegality and repression but is now threatened by legalisation.

Opium. Uncovering the politics of the poppy

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2010 /Harvard University Press.

The book sets out to expose the politics of opium. In particular it explores the world’s two major regions for illicit production of opium and heroin – the Golden Triangle of Burma, Laos and Thailand and the Golden Crescent of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. These remote mountainous regions of Southeast and Southwest Asia produce more than 90 per cent of the world’s illicit opium. The book reveals how, when and why illicit opium production emerged and what sustains it. The text exposes the real drivers of the modern day trade in opium and shows why a century of international effort, and forty years of a US-led war on drugs, have failed to eradicate it.

Licensing Afghanistan’s opium: solution or fallacy?

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2008 / Caucasian Review of International Affairs.

For almost two decades Afghanistan has been the world’s largest illicit opium producer. Decades of war, droughts, poverty, and political incapabilities have driven up the country’s opium production despite counter-narcotics programmes ranging from forced eradication to alternative development. In 2005, that is, a few years after the replacement of the Taliban regime by the Karzai administration, the licensing of Afghan opium for the production of legal medicines such as morphine and codeine was proposed as a solution to address illicit Afghan opium production. This proposal benefited from a very positive stance of the world press, in spite of its many inaccuracies and fallacies.

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