BLANTYRE, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Malawi is ready to start commercial production and processing of cannabis for medicinal and industrial use, the southern African country’s new Cannabis Regulatory Authority said on Tuesday.
Malawi’s parliament passed a bill in February that makes it legal to cultivate and process cannabis for medicines and hemp fibre used in industry, but stops short of decriminalising recreational use.
A growing number of countries around the world are either legalising or relaxing laws on cannabis as attitudes towards the drug change. They include several in southern Africa, including Zambia, Lesotho and Zimbabwe.
The board chair of Malawi’s regulator, Boniface Kadzamira, said his board had received more than 100 applications for licensing which were under review.
The agriculture ministry on Friday announced the license fees, which will range from $100 to $10,000 a year for the cultivation, selling, storage, distribution of either class of industrial and medicinal hemp.
According to the minister’s gazette dated Nov. 20 and seen by Reuters, public hospitals will pay $100 and private hospitals $200 as licence fees to dispense cannabis medicines.
“We have received an overwhelming response in terms of applications for licences, but applicants must appreciate that we’ll not give everyone a licence at once,” said Kadzamira.
He said hemp – a strain of the…
