The southern African nation of Zimbabwe has legalized marijuana for medical and scientific use. The official notice issued April 27 by the government stated that individuals and businesses will be allowed to apply for licenses to cultivate cannabis for these purposes.<\/p>\n
The notice, published<\/a> by the Health Ministry\u00a0in the national daily newspaper Harare Herald,\u00a0made clear that the Zimbabwe medical marijuana program is going to be tightly controlled. Applicants for the licenses must submit detailed plans of their proposed production site and yield. Those applying for licenses must be Zimbabwean citizens or residents, or must also seek a waiver to be issued by the health minister. Those previously convicted of drug offenses are to be barred from applying.<\/p>\n In what is officially dubbed the \u201cProduction of Cannabis for Medicinal and Scientific Use Regulations,\u201d Zimbabwe\u2019s health minister, Dr David Parirenyatwa, said license will also be denied if it is seen as \u201clikely to create a risk to public health, safety or security, including the risk of cannabis being diverted to an illicit market use.\u201d Cultivation of cannabis \u2014 known regionally as\u00a0\u201cmbanje\u201d\u00a0or\u00a0\u201cdagga\u201d <\/em>\u2014 is currently punishable by up to 12 years in prison.<\/p>\n The fact that Zimbabwe has been a closed society for decades makes this development even more meaningful. First, it points to growing space for freedom following the ouster of the country\u2019s longtime leader Robert Mugabe in November, with new President Emmerson Mnangagwa\u00a0pledging<\/a>\u00a0to \u201cre-engage with the world.\u201d However, in an indication of how things are still done in Zimbabwe, the Production of Cannabis regulation seems to have been unilaterally issued by the executive, not voted up by the country\u2019s legislature, the House of Assembly.<\/p>\n It also seems a positive sign for the daylighting of the\u00a0marijuana economy across Africa.<\/p>\n Despite harsh prohibition, there is already a thriving\u00a0\u201cdagga\u201d economy throughout southern Africa \u2014 and some fractures in the prohibitionist edifice.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Last year, the independent mountain kingdom of Lesotho, which is bordered on all sides by South Africa,\u00a0issued the first cannabis cultivation license ever<\/a>\u00a0on the African continent. The license, granted in September, went to South African firm\u00a0Verve Dynamics<\/a>. Cannabis is already Lesotho\u2019s primary cash-crop \u2014 and the country\u2019s economic mainstay. Since the job market in neighboring South Africa<\/a> contracted some 10 years ago, authorities in Lesotho have been using cannabis as a kind of economic safety valve. The law simply goes unenforced, under what\u00a0some have called<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0\u201cde facto\u00a0decriminalization.\u201d<\/p>\n South Africa itself, the region\u2019s largest economy by far, also now has a vigorous legalization movement<\/a>, demanding cannabis be allowed as a solution for the country\u2019s struggling farmers, who have been hit hard by globalization.<\/p>\n March 2017 saw a big step forward for\u00a0\u201cdagga\u201d in South Africa, when a court in Cape Town\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0that the country\u2019s cannabis prohibition law is \u201cunconstitutional,\u201d asserting that adults have the right to use, grow or possess in the privacy of their homes. The decision is not as meaningful as it superficially seems, as it only permits the law\u2019s unconstitutionality to be used a defense \u2014 so arrests can technically continue. The court gave South Africa\u2019s government two years to pass a new marijuana law that is up to constitutional muster.<\/p>\n The first year has now passed, and the moves by Zimbabwe and Lesotho put greater pressure on South Africa to make provisions for legal cultivation.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you have access to medical marijuana?<\/p>\n The post Zimbabwe Becomes Second African Country to Legalize Medical Marijuana<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The southern African nation of Zimbabwe has legalized marijuana for medical and scientific use. The official notice issued April 27 by the government stated that individuals and businesses will be allowed to apply for licenses to cultivate cannabis for these purposes. The notice, published by the Health Ministry\u00a0in the nationalContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,216,3477,53,139,66,3683],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25884"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25885,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25884\/revisions\/25885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Zimbabwe Becomes Second African Country to Legalize Medical Marijuana<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"