Kampala addresses delays in marijuana licensing

Investors waiting for clearance to begin the large scale planting of marijuana are entitled to be aggrieved at government’s delay in instituting the legal framework to regulate the medicinal crop, Uganda’s Agriculture Minister has conceded. Christopher Kibanzanga told the Daily Monitor that several investors and medical research institutions have expressed frustration over the delays to grant them licences to grow the crop for medical purposes. He believes if the profits of the high value crop are properly allocated, they could boost the economy. Uganda’s Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (2015) does provide for the cultivation, production and exportation of medical marijuana on a small scale. He said potential investors from Israel, the US and Canada ‘are all writing to me over the matter … but this involves a process which comes with complexities’. He said the government needed to ‘benchmark with other countries and see how they have done it’.