Morocco’s House of Representatives adopted today Bill 13.21 on the legal use of cannabisfor medical purposes. The bill received a majority of votes (199) against 48 votes, who  voted no. The Justice and Development Party (PJD) was the only party of the government majority who rejected the bill. Morocco’s government first adopted bill 13-21 on March 11. The decision to adopt the bill made Morocco the first African country to allow the use of cannabis for therapeutic purposes. The Ministry of Interior said in a statement the bill will benefit farmers by raising their incomes. The bill is expected to create “promising and stable job opportunities,” it argued.

After Morocco’s historic “yes” vote on cannabis at the UN last Thursday, the path towards legal cannabis has widened. However, obstacles still exist. Morocco supported declassifying cannabis from Schedule 4, which contains the most dangerous drugs deemed to have no medical use. Morocco’s vote recognized the medicinal value of cannabis, a move that many saw as evidence Morocco could be on a path to legalization. In the midst of an economic crisis driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, Morocco could see cannabis as a way to boost tax revenue and stimulate the hard-hit tourism sector. Producers in Morocco illegally export roughly $8.8 billion of the cash crop annually, according to BBC estimates.

Le président du groupe de l’Istiqlal à la Chambre des Représentants, Noureddine Mediane, évoque la nécessité pour l’Etat de revoir son système répressif contre les 200.000 familles vivant du cannabis. "La culture du cannabis est toujours considérée comme un sujet tabou au Maroc. Je pense que nous devons rompre avec cet état d’esprit. D’où mon idée de lancer un débat national sur cette culture si répandue dans notre pays. Ce débat doit trancher si nous devons maintenir cette culture ou la faire disparaître définitivement."

La colaboración entre grupos criminales dedicados al tráfico de cannabis está creando “nuevos riesgos de seguridad” en Europa, donde el mercado de esta droga tiene un valor de al menos 11.400 millones de euros al año y mueve productos “cada vez más potentes y diversos”. Un análisis publicado por Europol y el Observatorio Europeo de Drogas y Toxicomanías (OEDT) señala que el del cannabis es el mayor mercado de drogas en Europa, y se estima que unos 22,6 millones de adultos europeos de entre 15 y 64 años han consumido esta sustancia en el último año. Las cantidades incautadas en la Unión Europea (UE) alcanzaron en 2021 sus niveles más altos en una década.

Los cambios políticos ocurridos en los últimos cinco años han reconfigurado dramáticamente el mercado del cannabis. No solo ha habido un boom sin precedentes en el mercado medicinal sino que, siguiendo los cambios políticos en muchas jurisdicciones, un número creciente de países también se están preparando para la regulación legal del uso no medicinal. Tales movimientos son impulsados por el reconocimiento de la inefectividad probada de las políticas represivas durante décadas, que han acarreado graves consecuencias negativas y apuntan a proporcionar un amplio rango de beneficios en términos de la salud y los derechos humanos.

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Across the world, the state of environmental stress is unprecedented. As scholarship and activism on ‘environmental justice’ points out, poorer and marginalised communities face particular exposure to environmental harms. This holds particularly true for populations in the global South. The role of illicit drugs in relation to these environmental stresses is an underexplored terrain. Yet, as this report will argue, drugs, as well as the policy responses to them, are an environmental issue.

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Should draft legislation clear the final hurdles in the next few weeks, Morocco could become the second Arab country to legalize cannabis. Lebanon was the first in 2020. Cannabis legalization has been suggested before in Morocco. It is hard to know whether the draft law will pass, Khalid Mouna, an associate anthropology professor at Moulay Ismail University in Meknes. Mouna said that had mostly been a tactic to gain the support of voters in deprived cannabis-growing areas. This time could be different, said Tom Blickman, a researcher on international drugs policy for the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute. "I think it's serious because the initiative comes from the government, and behind the government is the palace," he said, referring to the Moroccan royal family. "Previous proposals came from the opposition."

The cannabis plant has been used for spiritual, medicinal and recreational purposes since the early days of civilization. In this report the Transnational Institute and the Global Drug Policy Observatory describe in detail the history of international control and how cannabis was included in the current UN drug control system. Cannabis was condemned by the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs as a psychoactive drug with “particularly dangerous properties” and hardly any therapeutic value.

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La nécessité d’inscrire les noms des personnes poursuives pour trafic de cannabis dans les zones du Nord sur la liste des bénéficiaires de la grâce royale est une revendication du Parti de l’authenticité et de la modernité (PAM) et de l’Istiqlal (PI). Les groupes parlementaires de ces deux formations politiques ont ainsi réitéré cette demande, à en croire Hespress. Le parti de la Balance a alerté sur le fait que les détenus dans ces affaires «ne bénéficient pas de la grâce comme d’autres prisonniers», notant qu’il existe «des crimes plus abjects et dont les auteurs bénéficient de l’amnistie». (Lire aussi: Le nombre d’affaires liées à la drogue explose)