Medical Cannabis Legalized in Malawi
Malawi has legalized the growing and licensed distribution of medical cannabis, making them the latest country in southern African to relax their marijuana laws. The law also legalizes industrial hemp, reports Reuters.
Malawi’s full parliament passed a bill on Thursday that makes it legal to cultivate and process cannabis for medical use or for hemp fiber. The measure, which was tabled by Agriculture Minister Kondwani Nankhumwa, would not legalize recreational marijuana.
As noted by Reuters, a growing number of countries around the world are either legalizing or relaxing laws on cannabis, including several in southern Africa – most recently Zambia which legalized marijuana production for import in December.
“They follow Lesotho, which became the first country in the region to legalise cannabis, for medicinal purposes, in 2017, and Zimbabwe”. South Africa meanwhile has decriminalized domestic personal use, and is in the process of lifting a ban on commercial cultivation of the plant.
“We are very happy that finally we’re taking the right steps to move the country’s economy forwards,” Chauncy Jere, a director of Ikaros Africa, one of the two companies conducting industrial hemp trials in Central Malawi, told Reuters.
“There’s no denying that cannabis would be a lucrative industry and its demand is huge,” said Jere, who is spokesman for the Hemp Association of Malawi.
Tobacco, a drug scientists say is far more addictive and ruinous to health than cannabis, has been Malawi’s chief foreign currency earner since independence from Britain in 1964.