Is Weed Legal in Morocco? Understanding Morocco Cannabis and Marijuana Laws (2026)

Cannabis is legal in Morocco only for medical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and industrial use. Recreational use remains a crime. The framework dates to 2021, when Morocco passed Law 13-21 and created a national regulator — the National Agency for the Regulation of Activities Related to Cannabis (ANRAC) — to license cultivation, processing, and trade. Outside that licensed system, growing, selling, or smoking cannabis is still illegal, and the country’s long-running hashish trade remains a criminal matter.

Is Weed Legal in Morocco?

Yes for medicine and industry, no for recreation. Since 2021, Morocco allows licensed cannabis cultivation and processing for medical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and industrial products, while keeping recreational growing, selling, and use illegal. Every legal activity runs through ANRAC, which issues the permits, certifies approved varieties, and polices the supply chain from seed to finished product. Only companies governed by Moroccan law can hold authorizations, and cultivation is confined to a handful of northern provinces.

That makes Morocco part of a wider shift across the continent, where a growing number of governments have moved to license medical and industrial cannabis while leaving adult recreational use prohibited. For the regional picture, see our guide to cannabis in Africa; Morocco’s model sits closest to those of medical-export pioneers such as Lesotho, the first African country to legalize cannabis cultivation for medical purposes.

What Does Morocco’s Cannabis Law Allow?

Law 13-21 legalized cannabis strictly for medical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and industrial purposes and tasked ANRAC with running the entire chain — from seed production to the sale of finished goods. The agency licenses cultivation and production, the creation of nurseries, the import and export of seeds and plants, processing and manufacturing, transport, domestic sale, and the export of finished cannabis products. It also supports research and works to convert illegal growing into a regulated, income-generating sector.

The conditions are deliberately tight. Farmers cannot grow on their own: before a season starts they must be organized into cooperatives whose members each hold an ANRAC cultivation licence, and every grower must sign a purchase contract with a licensed operator that fixes price and payment terms before planting. ANRAC’s good-practice rules for growers set out training, traceability, and environmental requirements, including crop-rotation limits designed to protect scarce water. The law also caps the THC content of legally grown and processed cannabis: ANRAC certifies each approved variety, its label must show the THC rate, and material that exceeds the permitted ceiling — reported at under 1% for cannabis reaching the market — or otherwise loses certification must be destroyed in the presence of an agency-approved commission.

Is Recreational Weed Legal in Morocco?

No. Recreational cannabis is illegal in Morocco, and the 2021 reform did nothing to change that. Selling hashish on the street, growing for the black market, or smoking kif for pleasure all remain criminal offences. ANRAC’s director general, Mohamed El Guerrouj, has been explicit that the country’s program is purely pharmaceutical and industrial — talk of cafés or dispensaries is not on the table.

This sits awkwardly against Morocco’s history. The Rif Mountains have produced cannabis for generations, and “kif” — traditionally smoked in a long pipe called a sebsi — is woven into the region’s culture, even though Morocco formally banned cannabis production back in 1974. The country became one of the world’s largest hashish suppliers under that prohibition, and much of that trade still flows north toward Europe, frequently across the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain. Legalization was pitched in part as a way to pull farmers out of that illicit economy, not to bless it.

Where Is Legal Cannabis Grown in Morocco?

Legal cultivation is restricted to three northern provinces in the Rif: Al Hoceima, Taounate, and Chefchaouen. These are the historic growing heartlands, and the reform was designed to bring their farmers into a regulated system rather than open cultivation nationwide. By 2025 roughly 250 cooperatives and several thousand registered farmers were operating across the three provinces, with Taounate and Chefchaouen accounting for the largest numbers.

The clear winner of the rollout has been Beldia, the local landrace strain. Beldia needs little irrigation, suits small mountain plots, and now dominates licensed planting over imported high-yield varieties. In 2025 about 2,622 hectares were planted with Beldia against 519 hectares of imported strains, as Morocco leaned into a homegrown genetic base that it is also studying scientifically and moving to protect.

How Big Is Morocco’s Legal Cannabis Industry?

It is small but scaling fast. According to ANRAC figures reported through Morocco’s official news agency, the country produced 19,576 quintals of dried cannabis in 2025 — about 1,958 tonnes — up from 18,810 quintals the year before. That follows a steep climb from Morocco’s first legal harvest of roughly 294 tonnes in 2023, the season the earliest cultivation licences came on line.

The licensing base has widened just as quickly. ANRAC issued 4,147 new authorizations in 2025, bringing the total to 5,765 active permits: 5,492 for cultivation, benefiting 5,318 farmers, and 273 covering processing, marketing, export, seed import, and transport for 183 operators. The harvested area reached about 3,141 hectares, worked by 4,776 farmers. On the industrial side, five operators finished building processing plants with a combined capacity of 560 tonnes, eleven more were under construction, and Moroccan cannabis products went on sale at more than 600 ANRAC-authorized points of sale. Oversight grew with the sector: the agency ran 7,526 compliance inspections in 2025 and pulled 111 licences from 90 operators, alongside warning procedures against many more.

Can Morocco Import and Export Cannabis?

Yes, but only under ANRAC authorization and only for medical, pharmaceutical, or industrial purposes. The agency holds sole authority to clear exports of cannabis and cannabis products, and every movement — importing certified seeds and plants, transporting material, or shipping finished goods abroad — needs its sign-off. Seeds and plants may be imported only when certified by ANRAC with the approval of the interior and agriculture ministries, and authorizations are limited to Moroccan operators that meet the law’s conditions.

2025 was the year those exports actually began. Morocco shipped its first legal medical-cannabis consignments abroad, including a shipment of locally grown Beldia dispatched to Switzerland under ANRAC supervision, with further shipments reaching markets such as Australia. In October 2025 the Moroccan laboratory CANNAFLEX recorded what it called the first international sale of a Moroccan cannabis-based medicine, its Beldiya Plus product, prescribed to a patient in South Africa through a partnership with a South African pharmaceutical firm. By the close of 2025, ANRAC said Moroccan cannabis products had reached more than seven countries, including France, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Portugal, Australia, and South Africa, helped by promotional missions to several European capitals.

Are CBD and Cannabis Products Legal to Buy in Morocco?

Licensed cannabis products are legal to sell and buy inside Morocco’s regulated market, but each one must be registered first. Products are approved individually by the Moroccan Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AMMPS), and there are no open-ended categories — a cosmetic, a dietary supplement, or a medicine each needs its own authorization before it can be marketed or exported. In 2025 the AMMPS registered 110 cannabis-based products, including 50 dietary supplements, 59 cosmetics, and one medicine, bringing the total available on the market to 141.

The pharmaceutical side is moving too. Moroccan drugmaker Pharma 5 developed Cannabidiol Pharma 5, billed as the country’s first generic cannabis-based medicine and aimed at epilepsy, and cannabis products are increasingly stocked through ANRAC-authorized retail points rather than the informal market. What remains off-limits is buying cannabis outside that licensed channel: street hashish and unregistered products carry no legal protection and remain illegal.

What Are the Penalties for Cannabis in Morocco?

Outside the licensed program, cannabis offences are still prosecuted. Possession, recreational use, unlicensed cultivation, and trafficking remain crimes, and enforcement against smuggling continues even as the legal sector grows — authorities regularly intercept large illicit shipments bound for Europe. Tourists should be cautious: buying hashish in the Rif or in cities is a criminal act regardless of how openly it is offered, and the 2021 law provides no cover for personal recreational use.

Morocco has tried to pair enforcement with reconciliation. The interior ministry says illegal cultivation has shrunk dramatically over two decades — from roughly 134,000 hectares in 2003 to about 27,000 hectares by 2023 — and in 2024 a royal pardon was extended to thousands of farmers previously prosecuted for illegal growing, a gesture meant to encourage them into the legal cooperatives. Even so, with an estimated tens of thousands of Rif families historically dependent on the crop and European demand for Moroccan hash still strong, the illicit trade has not disappeared.

What’s Next for Cannabis in Morocco?

The near-term direction is more of the same, only bigger: wider licensing, more processing capacity, more registered products, and a harder push into export markets, all under ANRAC’s tight control. The agency has framed its priorities as structuring the sector, supporting small farmers, and opening national and international markets for Moroccan cannabis.

The open question is recreational reform. Farmers and some industry figures want the next step to be a legal recreational or wider commercial market that could better compete with global producers and finally displace the black market, but the government’s position has not budged — for now, Morocco’s legal cannabis remains a medical, pharmaceutical, and industrial story, and recreational use stays banned. Anyone weighing the country’s cannabis rules should treat the licensed program and the street trade as two entirely separate things: one is a fast-growing regulated industry, the other is still a criminal offence.