Morocco
More actions
| Morocco | |
|---|---|
| Subregion | North Africa |
| Cannabis Status | |
| Documentation | |
| Growing Regions | 1 |
| Growing Areas | 1 |
| Accessions | 1 |
Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in North Africa, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the north. Its northern Rif region is the home of the Moroccan beldiya cannabis landrace and the centre of the country's kif and hashish production.
Geography
Morocco occupies the north-western corner of Africa, with Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines. The Rif, the mountainous region along the Mediterranean coast, forms the country's cannabis-growing belt; it stretches roughly 350 km between the Atlantic and the Algerian border, and 80 to 120 km between the Mediterranean and the plains leading to the Middle Atlas.[1] Cultivation is now concentrated almost entirely in the Rif, although it was practised elsewhere in Morocco before independence.[1] The central Rif is among the least suitable parts of the country for agriculture, with uneven terrain, steep slopes, poor and eroded soils and, until recently, very limited irrigation.[1]
Cannabis
Cannabis has a long history in Morocco. Hemp grown for fibre and seed is attested in the Maghreb well before the psychoactive variety, which the ethnobotanist Jamal Bellakhdar places at roughly the 14th to 15th century; the date of introduction is contested and the scholarly sources do not converge on a single point.[1] Both kif and hashish are Arabic loanwords and there is no indigenous Berber term for the plant, consistent with an introduction from the east.[1]
Cultivation came to be concentrated in the Rif, around Ketama in particular, where the local ktami cultigen developed.[1] From the 1960s, production shifted from kif prepared for domestic smoking towards hashish made for export, driven largely by European demand, and Morocco became one of the world's principal hashish producers.[2] Since the 2000s the traditional beldiya landrace has been widely displaced by imported high-yield hybrids.[2] In 2021 Morocco legalised cannabis for medical, cosmetic and industrial use under Law 13-21, establishing a regulatory agency (ANRAC) to oversee licensed production; the first legal crop was harvested in 2023.[3]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Chouvy, Pierre-Arnaud (2022). "Moroccan hashish as an example of a cannabis terroir product". GeoJournal. 88 (4): 3833–3850. doi:10.1007/s10708-022-10791-5.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chouvy, Pierre-Arnaud; Afsahi, Kenza (2014). "Hashish revival in Morocco". International Journal of Drug Policy. 25 (3): 416–423. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2014.01.001.
- ↑ Chouvy, Pierre-Arnaud (2025). "Policy reform and the international future of Moroccan Cannabis production". International Journal of Drug Policy. 142: 104841. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2025.104841.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: article number as page number (link)