Ministry plans to legalise local Indian hemp variety
Ministry of Agriculture and the Cannabis Regulatory Authority (CRA) plan to legalise Indian hemp locally known as chamba to earn the country foreign exchange from the crop which is highly demanded globally.
Minister of Agriculture Lobin Lowe and CRA board chairperson Boniface Kadzamira said this on Saturday in Kasungu during the launch of industrial hemp planting exercise for cooperatives under the United States Cannabis Association (USCA).
The minister said CRA and Directorate of Agricultural Research Services should research on the local marijuana variety and review the Cannabis Regulatory Act to incorporate production of marijuana under licence conditions.
Lowe said local cannabis variety is easy to produce and is highly demanded globally.
He said: “We should be proud of our local variety otherwise we will regret to see other countries adopting our variety while we were busy adopting these foreign cannabis varieties.
“We can continue criminalising its abuse in the population while promoting its economic viability for medicinal and industrial use.”
Kadzamira, on the other hand, said Malawi should swiftly take a step to protect its Indian hemp variety before other countries secure the rights of the variety.
He said the country should review the laws banning the production and marketing of Indian hemp because the United Nations (UN) removed it among hazardous list of drugs in 2020.
“We have to take advantage of our local variety that we have had even before we legalised industrial and medicinal cannabis.
“We have received a lot of inquiries from bigger companies across the globe.”
In terms of value, Kadzamira said the price offers on local variety is around $150 (about K123 000) per kilogramme (kg) and $350 (about 287 000) per kg while the international market price is above $400 (about K328 000) per kg.
He said local Indian hemp is grown illegally, there will be the need to zone all the traditional growers to get them on board, legalise them by giving them group licences to grow the crop.
USCA chief executive officer Wezzie Ngalamila said through the launch of industrial cannabis seed planting exercise by members of 80 cooperatives they are empowering Malawians to participate in production.
She said they will buy all the cannabis that will be produced by the cooperatives. In December 2020, a UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted to remove cannabis from a list that categorised it as one of the most dangerous drugs, a move that recognised the plant as having medicinal value.
