Morocco
More actions
| Morocco | |
|---|---|
| المغرب (al-Maghrib) | |
| Capital | Rabat |
| Continent | Africa |
| Subregion | North Africa |
| Cannabis Status | |
| Legal Status | Illegal (recreational) |
| Status Since | 2021 |
| Enforcement | Eradication since 2004; licensed licit cultivation since 2021 |
| Documentation | |
| Growing Regions | 1 |
| Growing Areas | 1 |
| Accessions | 1 |
Morocco (Arabic: المغرب, al-Maghrib; Tamazight: ⵍⵎⵖⵔⵉⴱ, Lmeɣrib) is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa, on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. Its capital is Rabat and its largest city is Casablanca.
The Rif of northern Morocco are the country's traditional kif cultivation zone and one of the longest-standing drug-type cannabis production landscapes still under farmer management.[1] The country's cannabis history, its hashish economy and the legal regime governing cultivation are treated at Cannabis in Morocco.
History
Geography
Cannabis cultivation in Morocco is confined almost entirely to the Rif, the mountain belt along the country's Mediterranean edge, and the physical conditions there set the terms for anything grown in them. Soils are thin. Summers are hot and dry and winters cold and wet, with rainfall that is variable and generally insufficient and drought that recurs. Higher up, precipitation is heavier and two to three metres of snow can lie over the winter. Where there is no irrigation the growing season closes to spring and autumn.[2]
Five northern provinces carry the crop between them, and they carry it very unevenly. The 2004 survey conducted jointly by the Moroccan authorities and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found nearly two thirds of the national area standing in Chefchaouen Province alone, at 62 per cent, ahead of Taounate at 12, Larache at 10, Al Hoceima at nine and Tétouan at seven.[3] The distribution is a recent one. The historic growing ground was a far smaller thing, and its extent and its spread outward are treated at Cannabis in Morocco.
Demographics
Population
Languages
Religion
Ethnic groups
Economy
In the northern mountains cannabis is grown against a standing food deficit rather than alongside a working cereal economy. The geographer M'hamed Boudouah, measuring in the central Rif, records barley returning 4.7 quintals per hectare, durum wheat 4.3 and soft wheat 5.3, with lentils, broad beans and peas lower still. Only soft wheat clears five quintals, and he treats the resulting shortfall as the condition against which the crop is planted.[4] His own survey work registers how far the substitution had gone: of 263 farmers asked whether they grew kif in association with any other crop, eight said yes.[4]
The crop is nonetheless grown mostly without water. The joint surveys put 88 per cent of it on unirrigated land, in bour, in both 2003 and 2004, a share that had fallen to 80 per cent by 2005 as growers moved plots towards streams and springs and began sinking wells.[3][5] That shift, and the intensification it belongs to, are treated at Cannabis in Morocco.
What the crop earns has largely not stayed in the region. Boudouah records the proceeds going into land and property in the Saïs and the Gharb rather than into agriculture in the Rif, and the benefit concentrating in a stratum of no more than a tenth of households.[4]
Since 2021 two cannabis economies have run side by side. Cultivation for medical, cosmetic and industrial use is licensed through a national regulatory agency, with the first legal crop harvested in 2023; recreational use remains prohibited, and the licensed sector operates alongside the much larger illicit one it was not designed to replace.[6]
Cannabis in Morocco
Two cannabis crops have grown in Morocco and they ran separately for most of their history. Hemp for fibre and seed reached the Maghreb before the 10th century and was still grown at Sefrou, Fès, Meknès, Essaouira and Aït Ourir into the 1960s. The resin plant arrived far later and settled in the north: Jamal Bellakhdar places the shift that made the Rif a producing region in the 17th and 18th centuries, with resin-yielding cultivars probably brought from eastern Algeria.[7]
From the middle of the 19th century the plant was governed by a sequence of monopolies, exemptions and prohibitions, and the exemptions proved the more durable. A war indemnity in 1860 forced a state monopoly on the sale of cannabis and tobacco that could not be enforced; a state régie replaced it from 1886; the 1906 Conference of Algeciras handed the trade monopoly to a multinational company, the ancestor of the Régie des Tabacs et du Kif; and a dahir of 1932 prohibited plantations across the French zone except in two named perimeters.[7] The administrative history is treated in full at Cannabis in Morocco.
Cultivation is a smallholder system worked by household labour, concentrated in the central Rif and treated in detail at Cannabis in the Rif. Its traditional plant is the beldiya, the Moroccan landrace, grown for local herbal use as kif long before it was grown for export. The name is recent: Kenza Afsahi and Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy record that before imported hybrids arrived the plant was simply called naanaa, mint, and aachba, stalk.[8] The preparation and the practice are treated at Kif, and the resin and its trade at Hashish in Morocco. The plant's place in Riffian religious and social life is treated at Cannabis in Riffian culture.
The modern crop grew for export. Area rose from roughly 2,500 hectares at independence to about 25,000 in 1985 and 75,000 in 1993, peaking at around 134,000 hectares in 2003.[7][3] An eradication campaign begun in 2004 brought it down to 72,500 hectares by 2005 and to 47,500 by 2009.[7] Output did not fall with it. Over the same years the beldiya was displaced by imported hybrids yielding substantially more resin per hectare, so a smaller area went on supplying the same market.[1][8]
Growing regions
| Region | Has conservation status |
|---|---|
| Rif Mountains |
Growing areas
| Growing Area | Has growing region | Has conservation status |
|---|---|---|
| Ketama | Rif Mountains |
Accessions
| Accession ID | Name | Priority | Collected | Area |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RSC-MAR-HOC-0119900001 | Ketama 'Beldia' 1990 IBL | Low | 1990 | Ketama |
Conservation status
Recent news
| Article | Date | Province | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| News:2026-08-26/Enforcement/royal-gendarmerie-seizes-350-kg-of-kif-from-an-underground-store-at-oulad-hamdane | 26 August 2026 | Casablanca-Settat | Enforcement |
| News:2026-08-12/Enforcement/judicial-police-seize-4-89-tonnes-of-cannabis-resin-from-an-abandoned-van-near-safi | 12 August 2026 | Marrakech-Safi | Enforcement |
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 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.
- ↑ Bachir, Fatima; Eddouks, Mohamed; Arahou, Mohamed; Fekhaoui, Mohammed (2022). "Origin, Early History, Cultivation, and Characteristics of the Traditional Varieties of Moroccan Cannabis sativa L.". Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research. 7 (5): 603–615. doi:10.1089/can.2021.0020.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; Agence pour la Promotion et le Développement Economique et Social des Préfectures et Provinces du Nord du Royaume (May 2005). Maroc: Enquête sur le cannabis 2004 (PDF) (Report) (in français). UNODC.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Boudouah, M'hamed (2017). "Evolution de l'économie du Rif Central (Senhaja Sraîr) et problématique d'alternatives". Revue Tidighin des Recherches Amazighes et Développement (6). ISSN 2028-9782.
- ↑ United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; Agence pour la Promotion et le Développement Economique et Social des Préfectures et Provinces du Nord du Royaume (January 2007). Maroc: Enquête sur le cannabis 2005 (PDF) (Report) (in français). UNODC.
- ↑ 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) - ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Bellakhdar, Jamal (2013). "L'histoire du chanvre au Maghreb". Hespéris-Tamuda. XLVIII: 107–141. ISSN 0018-1005.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Afsahi, Kenza and Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, Le haschich marocain, du kif aux hybrides, Drogues, enjeux internationaux, n° 8, Observatoire français des drogues et des toxicomanies (OFDT), février 2015, 8 p.