Legal cannabis in Morocco: law 13-21 and the ANRAC

The founding text is law no. 13-21 on the lawful uses of cannabis, promulgated by dahir no. 1-21-59 of 14 July 2021 and published in the Bulletin officiel of 5 August 2021. Its full text is online on the Moroccan agency's website.

Its first article explicitly sets aside two older texts, the 1922 dahir on poisonous substances and that of 24 April 1954 prohibiting kif hemp, so as to allow the authorisation of cultivation, production, processing, transport, marketing, export and import. Article 2 defines the industrial purpose as any industrial activity, notably the food and cosmetics industries, excluding the medicinal and pharmaceutical industries. Cosmetics are therefore within the scope from the outset.

This shift places Morocco in an intermediate category, described in our overview of the three legal models of cannabis around the world: neither strict prohibition nor recreational legalisation.

Article 31 of the law creates the National Agency for the Regulation of Activities Relating to Cannabis, a public body with legal personality, based in Rabat. Nine activities are subject to its prior authorisation, from the nursery to export, each valid for ten years and renewable.

The conditions imposed on growers are strict and explain the shape of the sector. A grower must be a Moroccan national, of age, resident in a douar of one of the authorised provinces, a member of a cooperative and holder of a right over the plot. Seeds and seedlings must be certified by the agency, the whole harvest must be delivered to the cooperative at the contract price, and any production exceeding the contracted quantity is destroyed immediately before a commission.

The ANRAC's official frequently asked questions set out the geographical scope: cultivation is authorised only in three provinces, Al Hoceima, Chefchaouen and Taounate, that is to say the historic heart of the Rif.

Law 13-21 sets no percentage. Its articles 6 and 17 both refer to a level "set by regulation": above that level, cultivation and manufacture can be authorised only for the medicinal and pharmaceutical industries.

The figure was set a year later by a joint order of 12 May 2022. The ANRAC's FAQ states it: for industrial activities other than medicinal ones, the tetrahydrocannabinol level is set at 1 %.

One question remains open. The local variety, Beldia, has been grown for centuries in the Rif and accounts for most of the declared acreage. No official document available to consult states its measured THC content or the conditions under which it was certified compatible with the 1 % threshold. The agency states only that the authorised varieties are either imported, or local and certified by it.

The statistics published by the ANRAC circulate mainly through press releases relayed by the Moroccan press. For the year 2025, those relays report production of 19 576 quintals of dry matter, over 3 141 hectares harvested, by 4 776 farmers, with 5 765 operational authorisations and more than a hundred withdrawn following inspections.

These data call for a caveat. The 2024 results had been presented in tonnes of fresh matter, around 4 000 tonnes, whereas the 2025 results are expressed in quintals of dry matter. The two series are not comparable, no source specifies the basis used, and the resulting yields per hectare vary by a factor of three. These figures should therefore be read as an order of magnitude for a sector under construction, not as a growth curve.

Almost nothing, for three cumulative reasons.

The first is arithmetical. Morocco authorises 1 % THC for industrial use; France imposes 0.3 % on hemp extracts and on the products that incorporate them, as our article on the legal THC level in France recalls. A Moroccan product that is compliant at home can therefore be a narcotic here.

The second concerns varieties. The French framework requires a variety listed in the European catalogue or the official French catalogue. Beldia does not appear in either. Only certified imported varieties, a minority of Moroccan acreage, would open a route, and in the form of extracts rather than flowers.

The third is legal. The Kanavape judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which protects the free movement of CBD lawfully produced in a member state, does not apply to Morocco: it is a third country, subject to the customs import regime and not to intra-Community free movement.

One unknown remains: no reliable source documents that a batch of legal Moroccan cannabis has actually reached the French CBD market. The lists of export destinations in circulation come from unofficial trade websites.

The legal sector coexists with a long-standing illicit trade, for which Morocco remains, according to the European drugs agency, the main source of resin on the European market. The figure of 80 %, often repeated, is old: it comes from data collected in 2002 and published by the UNODC in its 2004 world drug report. The European agency no longer publishes a numerical market share and now describes a diversification of supply sources, with seizures of resin of Pakistani origin and signs of intra-European production.

That distinction matters to a buyer. A legal resin sold in France is a hemp product analysed below 0.3 % THC, unrelated to the traditional hashish of the Rif. Our reference points on pollen and resin, on the different formats of CBD hash and on adulterated resins and how to spot them set out what separates the two. Every batch we sell is analysed and published.