E166-1 – Why Moroccan Hash Struggles in Europe’s Pharmaceutical Cannabis Market with Jan van Weenen - Part 1

Why doesn’t Morocco’s historic cannabis dominance automatically translate into global pharmaceutical success?

Jan van Weenen's decade and a half in cannabis starts in the Netherlands, tours through Switzerland and lands in Morocco’s legal cannabis experiment. He has spent four years working with farmers, government, and doctors attempting to move the ancient Moroccan cannabis industry toward pharmaceutical grade production. Jan explains the challenges, particularly with naturally occurring heavy metals in the soil accumulating in Moroccan cannabis.

Jan describes the complex supply chain in Morocco including the challenges of aligning farmers, cooperatives, processors, and regulators. The lack of coordination in the supply chain leads to quality control issues and other frictions which shave cash off the bottom line of companies trying to enter the legal market. In this episode Kirk and Trevor continue the discussion of the growing pains for the Moroccan cannabis industry, the gap between government ambition and on-the-ground reality, and the joy of learning the rules of a world’s regulated cannabis market on the fly.

Listen now to this first of three stories from Morocco to understand how science, regulation, and culture collide in global cannabis markets.

Jan van Ween - LinkedIn

Transcripts, papers and so much more at: reefermed.ca