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Policy Delays Make Patients Pay — August 2026

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Policy Delays Make Patients Pay — August 2026

Arnau Valdovinos

October 2, 2026

Access the full version of this brief with detailed access to the complete recap of the last month, as well as a curated database of market insights and regulation updates.

August 2026 turned into a month of deferred verdicts: regulators pushed deadlines forward — the US hemp-THC ban to 11 December, Australian reform beyond 2027, South Africa’s bill to mid-2027 — while the cost of the unsettled rules landed on patients and industry at once.

Table of Contents

Reimbursement is emerging as an industry-defining category — Germany withdrew statutory cover for flower with no grandfathering, while Israel and Australia reported increases in the amounts covered.

Key figures from August 2026 include:

  • Germany‘s BfArM revises Q1 imports up 33% to a record 67.6 tonnes
  • US past-year use sits at 21.2%, or 62 million — 8.7% among 12–17-year-olds
  • UK‘s CQC counts ~300,000 prescriptions — 1.7M items dispensed in 2025
  • Israel‘s National Insurance reimbursement doubles to NIS 140m
  • Thailand takes 25% of Australia’s 81-tonne imports, as Canada drops to 61%
  • Canada issues 45 licences against 56 revocations, ending August with 900
  • Brazil patients pass 1M; the H1 market reaches R$470m, imports up 29%
  • Portugal exported 80t in 2025, 73% to Germany; H1 alone reaches 66t
  • Poland‘s pharmacy sales reach PLN 129.1m in five months, near 4.5t
  • Spain eradicated 875,061 plants in 2025; hash seizures rise 29% to 257t
 

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New Article:

Portugal’s Medical Cannabis Export Economy 🇵🇹

A Portuguese rooster balancing on export crates, illustrating Portugal's medical cannabis exports

 

Portugal’s export machine ran hardest under investigation

Portugal exported a record 66.3 tonnes of medical cannabis in H1 2026, even as inspections surged and licensed operators fell from 49 to 43. But the apparent diversification away from Germany is largely a routing story: once Spanish and Danish re-export hubs are counted, Germany’s effective share actually rose to 88%. Meanwhile, Portugal’s own medical market is finally growing. Access it now.

 
🏛️ Regulation

Germany reversed its reimbursement guidance, forcing off-label finished medicines before flower for ~65,000 patients. The US Senate pushed the federal hemp-THC ban to 11 December. Australia‘s TGA and ODC ruled out reform before 2027. Brazil‘s ANVISA cultivation resolutions took force. Italian and Dutch courts referred cannabis questions to the EU court. Czechia found violations at 63% of drug shops and readied action. Thailand‘s hospital-fraud probe widened to 20 hospitals, with a medical-only bill in drafting. Uruguay‘s IRCCA proposed opening pharmacy purchases to non-residents.

💼 Market

Curaleaf‘s hostile US$236m bid for Aurora would create the largest global cannabis company. Germany‘s BfArM revised Q1 imports up 33% to 67.6 tonnes. Canadian retail set a record C$517.8m in June, even as revocations outpaced new licences. Thailand took 25% of Australia‘s 81t of imports in 2025. Israel‘s reimbursement doubled to ₪140m as prices recovered, with a new ceiling of ₪50/g. The UK dispensed 1.7 million items in 2025. Brazil passed one million patients on an R$470m first half. Portugal exported 66,305kg in the first half, nearly matching the 80 tonnes of all 2025.

🔬 Science

Dronabinol cuts the frequency and intensity of PTSD-related nightmares, a German multicentre trial finds.

 

 

Infographic of the Month:

Australia: 2025 Market Metrics

 

🇺🇸 USA — DEA publishes the 2,533-page rescheduling record as the Senate pushes the hemp THC ban to 11 December

🔭 On the radar: Judge Derek Julius’s Schedule III recommendation is pending on no announced timetable; bipartisan House members want a federal framework by 30 September. Hemp THC recriminalisation now lands 11 December and synthetics 12 November, with the House stopgap yet to carry the delay. Illinois medical filings open 10 September; Illinois outdoor-cultivation comment closes 28 September.

🏛️ Regulation — Federal hemp THC ban slips to 11 December as Texas, Virginia and Tennessee enforce their own bans

The DEA published a 2,533-page hearing transcript on 26 August, covering the eleven days of testimony that closed on 15 July and leaving administrative law judge Derek Julius to issue a Schedule III recommendation on no announced timetable. The agency spent the month arguing its own case rather than waiting: its final post-hearing brief asserted cannabis has an accepted medical use while seeking to discredit nearly all opposing witnesses.

The Senate tabled Ted Budd’s amendment 61–32 on 8 August and passed the underlying funding bill 90–6, moving federal recriminalisation of most hemp-derived THC from 12 November to 11 December — but the House continuing resolution carried no such provision, so the delay is not settled. Synthetic cannabinoids that cannot be produced naturally by the plant still face recriminalisation on the original November date.

State medical programmes widened in the same month, with Georgia proposing mail-carrier delivery to more than 45,000 patients — the first state to move on USPS, FedEx, UPS and DHL shipment off the back of rescheduling.

The policy instruments themselves are producing perverse results: Alaska’s weight-based excise drove licensed growers down 25% while cutting the state’s take from US$29.6m to US$25.3m, a tax that shrank both the industry and the revenue it was designed to raise.

Product-safety enforcement reached the shelf in three states, with Massachusetts holding sales after a potency audit found 13 of 63 flower samples outside their labelled range.

💼 Market — Curaleaf bids US$236m for Aurora as Q2 margins hold and Ohio flower falls to $6.65 a gram

Curaleaf formally launched a US$236m unsolicited take-over bid for Aurora Cannabis on 18 August — the first attempt by a US operator to buy a Canadian licensed producer outright, and the month’s clearest sign that the American industry now treats Europe’s medical supply as the prize. The offer of 0.3463 of a Curaleaf share plus US$0.75 cash values Aurora at US$4.00, a 45% premium to its unaffected 30-day price.

Q2 delivered the sector’s broadest run of profitability yet, led by Trulieve at US$271m on a 60% gross margin, which listed on the NYSE and then completed its redomicile from British Columbia to Delaware in the same month. Underneath the margins, price is still falling: Ohio flower reached US$6.65 a gram, Oregon hit a six-year sales low and Delaware’s first year closed at a fifth of forecast.

Beverages became the sector’s fastest-moving category in the same month its legal basis was being rewritten, with Horticulture Co. posting 112.5% year-on-year growth and five new state markets. The Economist called the market booming and imperilled at once; Square told merchants to stop selling hemp and CBD outright.

Institutional capital re-entered the sector for the first time in years, with Cantor Fitzgerald, Wellington and Citadel disclosing new positions via 13F filings, while Vireo secured a US$65m BMO-led revolver.

🔬 Science — Youth past-year use falls to 8.7% as adult harm signals move the other way

SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health 2025 puts past-year cannabis use among 12- to 17-year-olds at 8.7%, down from 14.2% in 2011, with past-month use at 5.0% against 6.1% in 2021 — measured on more than 60,000 interviews across the period in which states legalised adult sales. Overall past-year use rose to 21.2%, or 61.6 million people, so the growth sits in the older age groups rather than among minors.

  • Use among 18- to 25-year-olds runs at 33.7% and among over-26s at 20.6%
  • Gallup puts adult smoking at 17% and edible use at a record 15%, while support for legalisation falls four points to 64%
    • Republican support drops thirteen points to 40%, its lowest in a decade

Federal surveillance moved the other way on adults, with CDC recording a 3.7-fold rise in cannabis hyperemesis emergency-department visits after a new US diagnosis code took effect.

Two experimental studies complicated the therapeutic account from opposite directions.

 
🇩🇪 Germany — KBV backtracks in twelve days, forcing off-label finished medicines before flower for 65,000 patients

🔭 On the radar: The G-BA consultation on flower reimbursement opened 30 August. Vertanical’s Exilby launches in September with its AMNOG reimbursement price still unnegotiated. Saxony-Anhalt votes on 6 September, and drug commissioner Streeck has named four KCanG correction areas for the committee round.

🏛️ Regulation — KBV mandates finished medicines before flower as the government rules out grandfathering

The KBV reversed its own interpretation on 18 August, twelve days after issuing it jointly with GKV-Spitzenverband: a cannabis finished medicinal product must now be prescribed first during the mandatory six-month trial period, even outside its approved therapeutic areas. Only two such products exist — Vertanical’s Exilby, licensed for chronic back pain with a neuropathic component and not launching until September, and Sativex for multiple sclerosis spasticity — so the rule obliges doctors to try a licensed medicine off-label before reaching for flower.

Barmer set a hard 30 July cut-off with no transition period, completing the payer consensus, and the government then confirmed there would be no grandfathering for patients already on flower.

Patients opened three legal fronts against the withdrawal, and the first to reach a decision failed — Frankfurt’s Social Court rejected an emergency application on 26 August.

Two administrative courts struck regulators’ conditions on cultivation associations in the same month: Karlsruhe removed the extra licence conditions the Freiburg authority had imposed on seven associations, and Gera blocked the TLLLR from tightening JTown Jena’s licence.

Drug commissioner Hendrik Streeck called legalisation problematic and urged corrections on 5 August, then named four specific KCanG correction areas ahead of the committee round — moving from criticism to a reform agenda in nine days.

Enforcement tightened around the road and the border while two cities moved the other way: the Bayerisches Oberlandesgericht upheld a driving ban because a telemedicine prescription lacked clear dosing.

💼 Market — BfArM revises Q1 imports to a record 67.6 tonnes as Exilby launches commercially at €11/day

Germany’s medical cannabis market reached €1.15bn in 2026 with roughly three-quarters of that value now private self-pay, and BfArM revised Q1 imports up to a record 67.6 tonnes on delayed reporting — a 33% correction. The two figures describe the same shift from opposite ends: statutory cover receding while the import baseline keeps expanding, with the cost moving onto patients rather than out of the system.

Control of the German channel became the object of a takeover fight, with Curaleaf launching a US$236m unsolicited bid for Aurora Cannabis — the largest EU-GMP supplier into Germany — on 18 August.

The domestic supply chain kept building through the disruption, with Tonnex securing EU-GMP certification and a manufacturing licence for its Schwerin site.

Vertanical’s Exilby became the test case for whether substitution actually saves money, with the hemp lobby opposing its €11-a-day launch as the entrepreneur defended it publicly.

🔬 Science — Nature Medicine RCT shows dronabinol cuts PTSD nightmares

A randomised controlled trial published in Nature Medicine found dronabinol significantly reduces both the frequency and the intensity of PTSD-related nightmares — the month’s strongest German-anchored efficacy signal, arriving as the country restricts reimbursement for the flower form of the same active compound.

The domestic evidence ran the other way, with Ekocan coordinator Jakob Manthey pointing to high-THC pharmacy cannabis as a plausible contributor to rising hospitalisations in a ZEIT interview — while stressing the effects are moderate.

 
🇨🇦 Canada — Exports carry the record quarter as licence revocations outpace new grants 56 to 45

🔭 On the radar: Israel’s reopened anti-dumping probe can impose a temporary levy on Canadian flower without ministerial approval. Ontario’s fiscal review of the OCS and AGCO runs through the summer. Curaleaf’s US$236m bid for Aurora remains open, with Aurora’s board advising shareholders to take no action.

🏛️ Regulation — Eleven fewer production licences in 2026 show consolidation as Israel reopens its anti-dumping case

Canada issued 45 new cannabis production licences in the first eight months of 2026 against 56 revocations — a net loss of eleven, leaving 900 federal licences at the end of August. The composition shows where the contraction bites: 488 micro licences, 378 standard, 18 medical sales-only and 16 nurseries, with the smallest operators carrying most of the churn.

The month’s sharpest regulatory risk to Canadian producers was written in Jerusalem: Israel reopened its anti-dumping investigation on 5 August and signalled that a temporary levy could be imposed without ministerial approval.

Provincial oversight tightened at home, with Ontario opening a fiscal review of the OCS and AGCO alongside other provincial agencies over the summer.

💼 Market — Village Farms exports jump 74% and Tilray lifts capacity to 275 tonnes as domestic demand flattens

Exports, not the domestic channel, carried the quarter: Village Farms posted record exports of US$20.9m, up 74% year on year, on record cannabis revenue of US$53.5m, adjusted EBITDA of US$15.3m at a 29% margin and a fifth consecutive quarter of positive net income. The pattern repeats across the sector — international sales are where the growth sits, even as Canada takes the title of the world’s largest market on domestic volume.

EU-GMP certification is the gate the export race runs through, and two producers cleared it in the same fortnight — Canopy renewed its Kincardine certification for European supply.

Organigram posted a record Q3 with net revenue up 49%, one of five Canadian producers to report records or a return to profit inside a single fortnight.

Curaleaf’s US$236m unsolicited bid for Aurora, launched formally on 18 August, is the first attempt by a US operator to buy a Canadian licensed producer outright — and it targets the company that supplies more EU-GMP flower into Germany than any other.

Domestic retail set a record while the demand underneath it stayed flat: June sales reached C$517.8m, a second consecutive month above half a billion, and Canada surpassed California as the world’s largest cannabis market.

🔬 Science — Cannabis in fatal collisions falls to 25.2% as Ottawa funds a C$24m brain-health consortium

Cannabis presence in fatal collisions fell to 25.2% in 2022/23, which the source reports as below the pre-legalisation rate — though it cites two different 2017 baselines, 22.4% and 27.3%, so the claim holds against one and not the other. Read with care, it is still the clearest Canadian evidence yet that legalisation did not produce the road-safety deterioration its opponents forecast.

Two studies complicated dosing and impairment at the same time, with a systematic review reporting that CBD co-administration increases the plasma availability of THC and 11-OH-THC.

 
🇦🇺 Australia — Thailand takes 25% of medical cannabis imports as regulators rule out reform before 2027

🔭 On the radar: The NSW driving offences bill has passed the Legislative Assembly, with a roadside THC threshold set at 50 ng/mL; Queensland’s parallel bill is still before parliament. Avecho’s Phase III CBD insomnia trial is recruiting its final stage.

🏛️ Regulation — TGA and ODC rule out reform before 2027 as NSW sets a 50 ng/mL roadside threshold

The TGA and ODC told industry that reform cannot be rushed and signalled nothing structural before the end of 2027, praising the sector’s engagement while committing to none of it — the defining fact of Australia’s regulatory month is what did not happen. In the same fortnight Victoria’s Legislative Council rejected a legalisation plebiscite, and the compassionate access scheme remained inactive five months after its relaunch.

Driving law moved while everything else stalled: the NSW Legislative Assembly passed the medical cannabis driving offences bill, and budget estimates then revealed the roadside screening threshold at 50 ng/mL — a number police had not previously disclosed.

  • Protesters gather in Brisbane against Queensland’s parallel bill, which patients say compounds existing driving hardship

Veterans became the month’s integrity question, with subsidies surging to A$125m as providers were accused of exploiting the scheme.

💼 Market — Thailand takes 25% of imports as annual volumes reach 81,119kg

Thailand went from 1% to 25% of Australia’s medical cannabis imports in a single year while Canadian shipments fell 21%, on Office of Drug Control data showing total imports of 81,119 kg in 2025 — up 5% on the year and 82% on 2023. Canada still supplies 61% of the total, but domestic production outgrew Canadian imports for the first time since 2022, and the supply map now has three competing origins rather than one dominant one.

Demand kept outrunning the access machinery: SAS-B approvals reached 21,570 in July, a third successive month above 20,000, taking the year-to-date total past 140,000.

The ASX reporting season split the sector between operators turning cash-positive and those compressing on margin, with Vitura posting a A$4.4m net loss on revenue up 5.7% to A$131.2m.

Hemp manufacturing got its first industrial-scale commitment, with Living Canvas securing an A$2m NSW grant for Australia’s first large-scale hemp manufacturing facility.

  • 🇳🇿 New Zealand — Puro and the NZ Medicinal Cannabis Council sweep three categories at the 2026 Cannabiz Awards, held in Melbourne
🔬 Science — A 149-study meta-analysis links cannabis to psychosis onset 2.5 years earlier

A meta-analysis of 149 studies found cannabis use associated with psychosis onset 2.5 years earlier, across more than 71,000 participants — the largest synthesis yet on a question that sits directly under Australia’s prescribing debate. A second review, covering 200 studies, concluded that cannabinoids are insufficient as treatment for mental and substance use disorders, so the month’s two largest evidence syntheses both cut against therapeutic expansion in psychiatry.

Australia is where the counter-evidence is being generated, with Drug Science extending Project Twenty21 to 522 Australian patients in a prospective observational study.

 
🇬🇧 United Kingdom — Prescriptions double to ~300,000 as Aurora buys a UK pharmacy for £2.1m

🔭 On the radar: The ACMD review of medical cannabis is still awaited. Jersey will bring in prescribing controls by the end of 2026.

🏛️ Regulation — A white paper seeks an NHS pilot as the Home Office tightens GMP rules on importers

A white paper published on 20 August called for an NHS cannabis pilot, a NICE review and a parliamentary inquiry into access barriers — the first coordinated attempt to move British prescribing out of the private market and into the health service. It arrives with CQC data putting prescription volumes at roughly 300,000, double a year earlier, and with National Police Chiefs’ Council guidance approved in early 2026 — instructing officers to treat prescribed patients as legitimate until proven otherwise — now adopted across all 43 forces in England and Wales.

Employment law is where the gap now shows: 29% of Releaf Protect patient calls involve workplace issues, against a legal position that no British employer has been told how to handle.

Two outlets warned in a single week that undisclosed synthetic cannabinoids are contaminating CBD and low-THC flower across Europe, both citing EU drug agency data.

💼 Market — Tilray, Dunbar and Aurora build UK routes as most flower now tests at 25% THC or above

Aurora bought a UK pharmacy and import licence for £2.1m, securing what it called a direct route to patients and removing the intermediary from its British supply chain. Three suppliers moved on the same market inside a fortnight, which is the clearest signal yet that the UK is the contested European beachhead rather than a secondary export destination.

The reason the beachhead is worth taking is margin: landed-cost analysis shows the import channel captures up to 74% of the retail price of UK medical cannabis flower.

The clinic layer consolidated and began competing on transparency, with Releaf publishing a ten-clinic comparison on price and patient reviews.

🔬 Science — An endometriosis registry finds sustained pain relief and reduced opioid use over 24 months

A registry study of 101 endometriosis patients found sustained pain relief and reduced opioid use across 24 months — the longest British-linked follow-up yet in a condition with few pharmacological options. Registry evidence is where UK medical cannabis research is concentrating, because the prescribing base is private and the randomised trials are not being funded.

Demand is arriving from conditions the NHS cannot currently serve, with prescribing for ADHD growing while more than 700,000 people wait for an NHS assessment.

 
🇧🇷 Brazil — ANVISA’s cultivation resolutions take force as recurring patients pass one million

🔭 On the radar: Compounding-pharmacy CBD sales stay blocked pending a further ANVISA rule.

🏛️ Regulation — RDC 1.012 and 1.013 come into force as Rio Grande do Norte dispenses CBD through the SUS

ANVISA’s cultivation framework stopped being a text and started being a process: RDC 1.013/2026 came into force on 4 August, RDC 1.012/2026 opened the research-only cultivation route a day later, and on 26 August ANVISA and MAPA published a 74-page implementation guide covering both. The guide is the operational document the year’s regulatory work was building towards, and it arrives with the agricultural side still incomplete.

Access advanced unevenly in the same month: Rio Grande do Norte became the first state to dispense cannabidiol through the SUS, putting a cannabis medicine inside the public health system for the first time.

Enforcement ran alongside the framework, and in one case crossed a line the sector would not accept: a warrantless police operation against the OSACI patient association in São Paulo drew condemnation across the associative sector.

💼 Market — Cannect buys pharmacy Pill and projects R$200m revenue as the H1 market reaches R$470m

Cannect made itself the sector’s hub in a single month, acquiring the digital pharmacy Pill and projecting R$200m of revenue by 2028, then partnering with Flextem Biopharma to bring pharmaceutical-grade cannabis into Brazil. Two deals by one company, on both sides of the chain — distribution and supply — in a market that has grown by patient count rather than by consolidation until now.

Recurring medical cannabis patients passed one million as the market reached R$470m in the first half, but the prescribing base behind those numbers is narrow.

Imports remain the supply route and they are increasingly American: US companies account for 94% of RDC 660 import requests in H1 2026, up from 92% in 2025.

  • ANVISA cannabis import authorisations rise 29% in the first half — a separate series from the RDC 660 request counts above, and not directly comparable
🔬 Science — A UFPB trial cuts anxiety scores from 35 to 12 as two autism trials disagree

Brazilian psychiatric CBD research accumulated across three studies in three weeks, led by a UFPB trial cutting mean anxiety scores from 35.7 to 12.2. They sit at three different grades of evidence and should not be read as one body of proof: a human trial in anxiety, a clinical finding in obsessive-compulsive disorder, and an animal study in rats are three distinct claims about three distinct questions.

Two autism trials published twelve days apart reached opposite conclusions: a randomised trial of the NTI164 full-spectrum extract reported a 1.65-point CGI-S advantage over placebo, while a separate trial found CBD-rich oil gave no advantage over placebo on social cognition in autistic children.

CBD research is also moving well outside psychiatry, with a CBD-diclofenac combination showing antibacterial action against Staphylococcus epidermidis.

The research infrastructure around all of this is consolidating, with USP’s Ribeirão Preto faculty named winner of the CannaPortugal cannabis research award.

 
🇮🇱 Israel — Anti-dumping case on Canadian flower reopens as complaint cites 18 collapsed growers

🔭 On the radar: A temporary levy on Canadian cannabis could be imposed without ministerial approval. The Medical Cannabis Unit is examining Canada’s plain-packaging model for Israeli products. Green Leaf returns to the Knesset elections with legalisation as a coalition condition.

🏛️ Regulation — Chamber of Commerce urges an import freeze despite warnings on patient costs

Israel reopened its anti-dumping investigation into Canadian cannabis on 5 August and signalled that a temporary levy could be imposed without ministerial approval — a duty on the source of most of the country’s supply, decided outside the normal ministerial route. The complaint behind it, revealed a day later, names 18 collapsed Israeli growers, Canadian subsidies and a 42% import surge as the cause of the domestic sector’s distress.

  • The Chamber of Commerce urges a freeze of the probe as the Cancer Society warns of patient harm — the trade-protection case set directly against the cost to patients
  • A California export route could open a second import front while the Canadian one is contested

Patient-facing rules moved on three fronts at once, with National Insurance medical cannabis reimbursement doubling to NIS 140m in 2025, roughly NIS 13,000 per patient per year.

Legalisation re-entered electoral politics, with Green Leaf returning to the Knesset elections and making cannabis legalisation a condition of joining any coalition.

💼 Market — Prices continue to climb as the most expensive flowers now market at ₪500 per 10g

The paradox at the centre of the dumping fight is that both prices are rising: Cronos posted a tenth consecutive record Israeli quarter selling LIT, the cheapest Canadian bud on the market, while Canndoc and IMC pushed the medical price ceiling to a record ₪500 per 10g. Cheap imports and record ceiling prices are running at the same time, which is the fact the anti-dumping case has to explain.

IM Cannabis spent August keeping itself listed and solvent, and the sequence is worth reading in order: a US$250,000 convertible note on 7 August, a C$4.4m net loss on 13 August, then the sale of IMC Holdings and its European assets to a company its own chief executive controls.

Innocan Pharma is reorganising around a brand rather than a molecule, with shareholders voting on a rebrand to Velsa Corp on 17 August.

 
🇵🇱 Poland — Pharmacy sales reach 4.5 tonnes in H1 as health committee rejects home cultivation

🔭 On the radar: Justice Committee opens decriminalisation hearings in September; ECS Botanics expects Polish commercial flower supply by end-2026 pending label review.

🏛️ Regulation — Health committee rejects home cultivation amendments

Poland’s Health Committee rejected two amendments permitting domestic pharmaceutical cannabis cultivation by 17 votes to 1 (12 abstentions) on 10 June, ruling them out of scope for the substitution-treatment bill rather than defeating the policy on its merits. The Health Ministry and Parliamentary Legislative Office said the amendments exceeded the bill’s scope, leaving domestic cultivation’s legal status untouched.

  • MP Witold Tumanowicz’s (Confederation) amendments would have let companies and institutes grow non-fibre cannabis under 10-year Chief Pharmaceutical Inspector permits, with a 1,000m² minimum plot.
  • Next step: the amendments could be resubmitted as a standalone bill, requiring a fresh first reading and impact assessment.

Poland’s Justice and Human Rights Committee will open hearings on the decriminalisation bill in September, after chair Paweł Śliz’s 30 July reassignment of the file from the Health Committee. The bill would decriminalise possession up to 15 grams and one home-grown plant, following a record roughly 21,000-response public consultation.

  • Next step: a public hearing precedes the September committee proceedings; the reassignment “doesn’t guarantee passage,” per Śliz.
💼 Market — Pharmacy sales reach 4.5 tonnes in H1 as operators report record sales

Poland’s pharmacy sales of medical cannabis reached PLN129.1m in the first five months of 2026, with unofficial estimates putting volumes at about 4.5 tonnes by mid-year — pointing to a volume rebound after 2025’s 17.6% value contraction to PLN262.6m. The 2025 fall reflected competitive pricing rather than weaker demand — volumes sold were near-identical to 2024 — capping a 2019–2024 run in which the market grew 90-fold to PLN318.5m.

  • Cantourage’s Poland revenue rose 250% to €2.1m in Q2 2026 from €0.6m, as the country becomes central to its non-Germany expansion.
  • ODI Pharma’s net sales climbed 10.5-fold to SEK32.9m in the year to June 2026 via its Polish subsidiary, as it targets becoming the country’s leading medical cannabis supplier.
  • Cosma S.A. returned to profitability with Q2 2026 revenue of PLN7.28m, more than double Q2 2025.
🔬 Science — Kraków team traces male-flower formation to ethylene and auxin signalling

Researchers at the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Górski Institute in Kraków identified the hormonal cross-talk behind male-flower formation in genetically female cannabis plants. The study traces sex determination to ethylene and auxin signalling, alongside known agents such as silver thiosulfate and ethephon.

  • A Lublin cluster (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Medical University of Lublin, University of Life Sciences) found spent hemp infructescence oils show stronger antibacterial activity than flower-derived oils against skin and oral bacteria, including C. acnes.
  • Medical University of Białystok researchers found CBDA reduced diet-induced neuroinflammation in high-fat-diet rats, improving insulin signalling and lowering inflammatory lipid mediators.
 
🇪🇸 Spain — Cannabis clubs come under fire as patients still await medical cannabis roll-out
🏛️ Regulation — Pressure on cannabis clubs mounts as tobacco law could ban smoking spaces

AEMPS granted Phyto Supplies an R&D licence for medical cannabis research while its register of standardised cannabis preparations holds two preparations by Curaleaf.

Barcelona presented Plan Druida on 4 August as an offensive against all of the city’s estimated 200 cannabis social clubs, with files opened on a large majority and fifty extra Guardia Urbana officers joining in September.

  • Deputy mayor Albert Batlle says the council will keep applying pressure until the clubs disappear, having earlier called an excess of legal safeguards an obstacle to closure
    • CatFAC calls the plan indiscriminate criminalisation and a break with the Catalan parliament’s 2023 resolution recognising clubs as a prevention strategy
  • Barcelona simultaneously marks 25 years of overdose prevention, with Metzineres logging more than 9,000 sessions — the same city closing one kind of consumption space while celebrating another

Enforcement scale reached a record, with police dismantling the country’s largest hashish network, arresting 57 and seizing 10.5 tonnes.

💼 Market — CITCO records 875,061 plants seized as herbal cannabis volumes fall 16.16%

CITCO’s statistics record 875,061 cannabis plants seized, redrawing the map of Spain’s illicit trade:

  • Hashish: 257.3 t seized (+29.1%), with Andalucía accounting for 77.1%.
  • Herbal cannabis: 35.5 t (−16.2%), marking the fourth consecutive annual decline.
  • Cultivation: 875,061 plants eradicated (−17.7%); Catalonia −71.6%.
  • Derivatives: other cannabis products surged 925.7% to 941.6 kg.
  • Spain is still perfecting products for a home market it has not opened: Málaga’s Borja Iribarne advanced the country’s first medical cannabis delivery device
🔬 Science — Salamanca finds CBD’s anticonvulsant effect depends on sex

A Salamanca team found that CBD produces anticonvulsant effects that differ by sex in an audiogenic epilepsy model — a dosing question that most cannabinoid trials do not stratify for. It is one of 26 Spain-affiliated cannabinoid papers PubMed logged in August, a research output the brief has previously under-reported because the pillar was never queried.

 
🇮🇹 Italy — CBD prescription rules stay suspended as TAR Lazio rejects appeals, CJEU referral pending

🔭 On the radar: Italy’s Constitutional Court hears the hemp-flower ban case on 21 October.

🏛️ Regulation — Courts keep CBD prescription rules suspended as seizures are reversed

Italy’s TAR Lazio rejected two separate merits appeals against the CBD prescription decree on 14 August, leaving the requirement for a medical prescription on oral CBD products suspended pending the EU’s ruling. Cbweed challenged the Health Ministry’s June 2024 decree directly and Crystal challenged a related cosmetics circular; both rulings cited a prior TAR judgment itself still under appeal.

  • Industry body Canapa Sativa Italia says “the matter remains open,” because a separate Consiglio di Stato referral to the CJEU (below) leaves the underlying EU-law question unresolved.

Italy’s Consiglio di Stato — a separate, higher-level proceeding from TAR Lazio’s — suspended its own judgment and referred five questions on CBD’s medicinal classification to the CJEU, in an order made public 3 August following a 7 May hearing. Trade body Ici’s appeal challenges the same June 2024 ministerial decree on different grounds, asking whether Italy’s restrictions breach free movement of goods and proportionality absent proven psychotropic effect.

  • All costs and further Italian rulings are reserved until the CJEU responds; no timeline was given.

Italy’s Corte di Cassazione ruled, in a July judgment reported in August coverage, that hemp flowers cannot be confiscated without prosecutors proving an actual intoxicating effect — not botanical origin alone. The court reversed a lower ruling that had refused to return seized stock despite prosecutors’ own expert finding no intoxicating capacity; Canapa Sativa Italia counts 18 proceedings, including at least 730kg of flowers, where courts have now ordered restitution.

  • Italy’s Constitutional Court hears the underlying hemp-flower ban (Decree-Law 48/2025) on 21 October.

Two more August rulings extended that pattern of courts correcting enforcement overreach: an Aprilia CBD shop recovered its stock on 3 August, two months after a seizure later confirmed compliant, and Latina and Velletri courts voided narcotest-only cannabis-light arrests on 14 August.

  • Aprilia’s restitution is one of 31 cases Canapa Sativa Italia’s Osservatorio Art. 18 has tracked — 19 restitutions, six dismissals, one acquittal.
  • Latina Court rejected farm owner Dario Proietti’s arrest and voided seizure of roughly 2,200 plants across a greenhouse and field; Velletri Court separately confirmed two arrests but denied seizure of 8,880 plants on a 1.5-hectare farm, both citing narcotest field tests as showing cannabinoid presence, not concentration.
 
🇵🇹 Portugal — Medicinal cannabis exports grow 762% in three years to 79,883kg

🔭 On the radar: Infarmed says it lacks capacity as it widens farm audits following its waste-diversion findings; Iniciativa Liberal’s parliamentary questions on CBD seizures and patient access await a government response.

🏛️ Regulation — Infarmed finds illegalities at eight to nine farms as a judge voids the Paulo Santos prosecution

Portugal’s Infarmed has found illegalities at eight to nine medicinal cannabis farms since early 2026 — including a forged import certificate behind a 280kg Canadian cannabis shipment and waste-diversion concerns where declared residue exceeded planted flower volumes — reported in mid-August coverage. Infarmed acknowledged insufficient inspection capacity and has since increased surveillance and begun sealing suspended facilities, though it has faced enforcement difficulties; the Public Ministry has received the findings as testimony.

  • Industry body OPCM says the alleged misconduct “does not represent the medicinal cannabis sector,” calling for stronger Infarmed oversight and clearer standards separating licensed operators from criminal ones.

Judicial Police arrested Loja da Maria founder Paulo Santos on 5 August in Operação Over Limit over a 27.5kg haul of CBD and HHC products police said tested above legal THC limits, before a Castelo Branco judge voided the prosecution’s evidence and released him on 7 August. The judge found that Boom Festival organisers had unlawfully opened Santos’s package before forwarding it to police, and that an inspector’s second search warrant lacked valid prosecutorial authorisation — irregularities she said “invalidated and contaminated” the case.

  • Santos was released under a TIR (fixed-residence reporting condition); the investigation traces back to a 2023 Boom Festival shipment.
💼 Market — Exports climb to 66 tonnes in H1 2026 despite falling operator numbers

Portugal’s medicinal cannabis exports grew 762% in three years, from 9,271kg in 2022 to 79,883kg in 2025, per Infarmed’s activity-evolution reports for full-year 2025 and H1 2026, both released in August.

Tilray lifted global medical-cannabis cultivation capacity to about 275 tonnes a year from 210 tonnes, crediting the 30-tonne increase specifically to Quebec — while its Portugal facility, “the anchor of Tilray’s European supply chain,” raised output too, without disclosed figures.

 
🇦🇷 Argentina — Court forces INASE to grant first cannabis breeder’s title in years

🔭 On the radar: OSDE’s CBD coverage order still awaits a definitive amparo ruling.

🏛️ Regulation — Courts force a breeder’s title from INASE and CBD coverage from OSDE

A federal appeals chamber forced INASE to grant the CRAIG cannabis variety a breeder’s property title — Argentina’s first such recognition since the Choco OG variety. INASE had appealed the first-instance ruling before Sala III of the Federal Administrative Contentious Chamber upheld it, and only then did the agency sign the resolution.

A federal judge separately ordered OSDE to cover a child’s CBD-based treatment for global developmental delay, a provisional measure inside an ongoing amparo suit.

💼 Market — CBD Organics launches hash-style concentrates under the 1% hemp ceiling

Argentina’s hemp sector logged a single market item this month: CBD Organics began selling CBD hash-style concentrates under Law 27.669’s 1.0% THC ceiling for industrial hemp. No pricing, volume or market-size data has been published for the category, leaving its real scale unmeasured.

🔬 Science — CONICET team maps CBD’s receptor site days after a 37% fellowship cut

A CONICET-affiliated Bahía Blanca team published in PNAS the exact region of the α7 nicotinic receptor through which cannabidiol acts allosterically, days after 380–400 CONICET postdoctoral fellowships lapsed under a 37% budget cut. Lead author Juan Facundo Chrestia’s own fellowship ended 31 July, days before the paper appeared.

Universidad Nacional de Quilmes launched a new master’s degree in psychoactive substances, culture and drug policy, the country’s latest postgraduate programme in the field.

 
🇳🇱 Netherlands — Leiden shuts a coffeeshop for three months as four cities move on enforcement

🔭 On the radar: The Supreme Court’s reference on low-THC hemp now sits with the EU Court of Justice. Den Helder has pushed coffeeshop Tops’s relocation deadline to 5 December.

🏛️ Regulation — Four cities act against coffeeshops as the Supreme Court sends low-THC hemp to the CJEU

Enforcement moved decisively to the municipal level in August, with Leiden’s mayor closing coffeeshop Eerste Kamer for three months over inventory and manager breaches — one of four cities taking action against shops inside a fortnight. None of it came from The Hague: the licensing rules did not change, but the willingness of mayors to use the powers they already hold plainly did.

Two developments carry consequences well beyond Dutch borders, and both concern who may lawfully participate: the Supreme Court referred questions on low-THC hemp from other member states to the EU Court of Justice, putting the Opium Act’s treatment of imported hemp before Luxembourg.

The same municipal machinery is redrawing the coffeeshop map through planning rather than inspection, with The Hague scrapping Galaxy’s planned relocation to Uithof to the surprise of the neighbourhood that expected it.

Organised crime around the sector produced the month’s heaviest sentences, with prison terms of up to ten years for the explosive attack on coffeeshop Caza in Tilburg.

💼 Market — Village Farms’ Dutch arm posts $3.3m as full capacity slips to Q1 2027

Village Farms’ Dutch arm posted $3.3m of Q2 revenue and pushed full capacity out to Q1 2027, a modest figure inside a group quarter that set records everywhere else. The gap is the story: the parent booked record cannabis revenue of $53.5m and record exports of $20.9m, up 74%, while its wietexperiment operation is still ramping two years after the trial began.

 
🇨🇭 Switzerland — Geneva trial finds THC/CBD oil no better than placebo for dementia agitation
💼 Market — Green Karat’s Quebec genetics enter Swiss pharmacy supply via Astrasana

Astrasana becomes exclusive Swiss distributor for Canadian producer Green Karat, the sole business development on Switzerland’s file this month, adding the Quebec grower’s GMP-certified genetics to its pharmacy and clinic supply chain. The exclusivity covers Switzerland only; Green Karat’s other European distribution partnerships are unaffected.

  • Astrasana, a vertically integrated Swiss pharmaceutical importer, secures exclusive distribution rights to Green Karat strains including Modified Gas, Runtz OG and Pavé.
    • Green Karat has run a GMP-certified Quebec production facility since 2020.
🔬 Science — THC/CBD oil misses on agitation but cuts as-needed psychotropic use

Geneva’s MedCanDem trial found THC/CBD oil no more effective than placebo for agitation in severe dementia across 25 enrolled patients, though pro re nata (as-needed) psychotropic use fell significantly during the active-treatment period (p<.0001). The primary outcome, scored on the Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory, showed no significant difference between drug and placebo (p=.53), and no serious adverse events were attributed to the study drug.

  • The five-facility Geneva trial dosed patients up to 20mg THC and 40mg CBD daily, across eight-week active and placebo periods separated by a one-week washout.
    • 19 of 25 enrolled participants completed both study periods.
 
🇹🇭 Thailand — Committee drafts medical-only bill as hospital-fraud probe widens to 20 clinics

🔭 On the radar: Bangkok’s medical-only bill still needs committee sign-off and cabinet approval.

🏛️ Regulation — Prescription-fraud crackdown widens from hospitals to dental clinics

Thailand’s House Public Health Committee is drafting a bill restricting cannabis to medical use only, as its linked fraud probe now covers roughly 20 hospitals, up from an initial eight — the clearest signal yet that Bangkok intends to unwind its recreational carve-out. Committee chair Sakolthee Phattiyakul said the review aims to make Thailand “less viewed as a cannabis export hub.”

  • Committee’s inquiry centres on hospitals issuing fraudulent child-custody surrogacy certificates, the “artificial father-mother” scheme that prompted the wider cannabis-law review.

Deputy Government Spokesperson Ploythalay Laksameesaengjan warned dentists against pre-signing cannabis prescription forms without examining patients, citing breaches of four separate laws.

💼 Market — Germany’s TONNEX audits eight Thai producers for medical exports

German pharmaceutical importer TONNEX has audited eight Thai cannabis producers after visiting around 100 production sites, building a supply chain for medical-cannabis exports to Germany — one of just two Market items this month. The company, which runs an EU-GMP-certified facility in Schwerin, said reliable sourcing “doesn’t begin with purchasing a single batch, but with systematic evaluation of the producer.”

Thailand’s share of Australia’s medical-cannabis imports rose from 1% in 2024 to 25% in 2025, on Office of Drug Control data reported in August 2026 — a year-on-year shift rather than an in-month one — making Thailand Australia’s second-largest foreign supplier within a year.

  • Australia imported a total of 81,119kg of medical cannabis in 2025, with Thailand’s share climbing from a marginal position to second overall.
 
🇿🇦 South Africa — R14bn cannabis market awaits entry route, with no bill before 2027

🔭 On the radar: Township and Rural Cannabis Association plans a formal launch after a late-September leadership webinar; Madlanga Commission evidence leaders will inquire further into Jack Frost Pharmaceuticals; DTIC’s October buying mission tests appetite for SAHPRA-regulated exports.

🏛️ Regulation — Enforcement developments, not new law, define South Africa’s month

August’s regulatory record was written by enforcement bodies rather than by legislators, in two developments that stand alongside each other: the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry heard evidence on unlicensed cultivation and the intimidation of police, and the Mbombela High Court refused — in a 16 July ruling that surfaced in August coverage — to let the state forfeit a family home over cannabis grown on it. Neither touches the statute book, with the general Cannabis Bill not expected before mid-2027, but both show how the existing law is being applied at its edges.

South Africa’s Madlanga Commission of Inquiry heard evidence in August alleging that Jack Frost Pharmaceuticals ran unlicensed cannabis cultivation and used a taxi boss’s connections to intimidate police before it received its SAHPRA licence in September 2022. Evidence leader Advocate Matthew Chaskalson presented WhatsApp evidence of cultivation predating the licence, which SAHPRA granted in September 2022 (#82MC); commission leaders said they would inquire further, and neither Jack Frost nor SAHPRA had responded to requests for comment.

  • Cultivation dates to 2021, roughly a year before licensing — the gap the Commission is now probing.

Mbombela High Court dismissed the National Prosecuting Authority’s bid to forfeit an elderly couple’s home over their grandson’s 2021 cannabis cultivation, in a 16 July ruling picked up in August coverage. Acting Judge Malose Monene called the forfeiture attempt “arbitrary” and “constitutionally distasteful,” given the property also houses rental units and a homeless shelter; the judgment dismissed the forfeiture application with costs, and the grandson’s cultivation case remains untried in the Regional Court.

  • Ruling carries no stated precedent beyond this case; the underlying prosecution continues separately.

Regional contrast — Namibia: the Windhoek High Court ruled the Ganja Users of Namibia (GUN) constitutional challenge to prohibition premature in July, deferring to the Law Reform and Development Commission’s ongoing legislative review (reported 19 August) — a contrast that leaves South Africa’s Cannabis for Private Purposes Act (May 2024) and its ~R36bn illicit market as the region’s reference point for reform.

💼 Market — No legal route in, so grassroots routes around

Charl Botha writes that South Africa’s cannabis market — pegged at R14bn with a 10% growth target Trade Minister Parks Tau set in July 2025 — still has no coherent legal route to entry for entrepreneurs. Hemp permits allow planting but no offtake or processing mechanism exists, medical pathways don’t open broader trade, and the general Cannabis Bill isn’t expected until mid-2027.

  • Market-size estimates vary widely across sources, from R10bn to R36bn, depending on whether current activity, potential, or the illicit economy is counted.
  • DTIC’s inward buying mission — listed in August, applications due 21 August — restricts buyers to SAHPRA-regulated medicinal cannabis or capped hemp, the narrow channel Botha describes; South African flower reached Germany at 3.7 tonnes in 2025, against a 201-tonne national import total.

Grassroots operators are building commercial footholds around that gap, from township organising to hemp textiles. Three initiatives illustrate the range of activity emerging outside any formal commercial pathway.

🔬 Science — First field measure puts hemp water use at 377mm per season

University of KwaZulu-Natal and Rhodes University researchers recorded South Africa’s first field measurement of hemp water use, at 377mm over a four-month growing season in KwaZulu-Natal. Ground sensors and drone monitoring found water consumption comparable to eucalyptus (30–50 litres per tree daily), a baseline the team says is needed to assess hemp’s water-resource impact as cultivation expands.

  • Study team included Trevor Hill, Alistair Clulow and Masters graduate Gary Denton.

Tshwane University of Technology and the CSIR relaunched their Cannabis and Hemp Research and Innovation Platform, adding what TUT calls Sub-Saharan Africa’s only supercritical CO₂ extraction system. The platform offers cultivation, pest-management and formulation support across the value chain; TUT gave no capacity figures or exact relaunch date.

 
🇨🇴 Colombia — Aerial glyphosate ban on illicit crops revoked, resumption undated

🔭 On the radar: ANLA’s Environmental Management Plan and ILO Convention 169 prior consultation remain outstanding before any spraying resumes; the glufosinate pilot’s Constitutional Court effectiveness and safety results are still awaited.

🏛️ Regulation — Glyphosate ban revoked as government pilots a rival herbicide

Colombia’s government revoked Resolution 6 of 2015 — which had banned aerial glyphosate spraying of illicit crops — on 28 August, while separately piloting a different herbicide, ammonium glufosinate, announced three days earlier; neither announcement explains how the two tracks fit together. The repeal does not authorise resuming the spraying programme, per the new administrative act, and the government set no resumption date.

  • Full authorisation still requires an active Environmental Management Plan from environmental licensing authority ANLA (per Constitutional Court Ruling T-413 of 2021) and completed prior consultation with ethnic communities under ILO Convention 169.
  • The glufosinate pilot must separately meet Constitutional Court effectiveness and safety criteria before any wider rollout; the government gave no pilot locations, duration or hectare targets.
  • President De la Espriella first signalled a return to fumigation in his 7 August inaugural speech, promising unnamed “next-generation herbicides” without naming glyphosate.

Colombian hemp producers say conflicting THC limits under Law 2204 (0.3%) and Decree 811 (1%) are trapping the sector between overlapping rules, four years after the law passed. Lawyer Walter Aguirre Mazo called it “a legal trap for those interested in working with hemp,” with operators still dependent on the older 2021 decree rather than the law’s intended framework.

  • Producers say the uncertainty discourages investment in rural territories seeking alternatives to illicit crops.

Colombian security forces seized two marijuana caches in August: Bogotá police found 2,138kg at a Suba pet-foundation front on 19 August, and the Army’s Third Brigade seized over 50kg in 44 packages at Yumbo, Valle del Cauca, on 29 August, according to police and army statements.

  • Bogotá’s seizure prevented an estimated 155,000 doses reaching distribution, police said, with four arrests including one repeat offender; the city’s 2026 seizure total has passed 3.4 tonnes.
  • Yumbo’s seizure remains under judicial custody as investigators work to identify those responsible for the shipment.
💼 Market — PharmaCielo revenue rises to $1.4m as gross profit turns positive

PharmaCielo reported Q1 FY2027 revenue of $1.4m, up from $0.3m a year earlier, even as its net loss widened slightly to $1.438m. Gross profit turned positive at $0.5m, against a $0.1m loss a year earlier, which management credited to geographic expansion and new European flower sales.

  • Adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to $0.689m; management said it expects positive operating cash flow going forward on higher sales volumes and restructured costs.
🔬 Science — Real-world study of 124 older adults finds pain relief with mild side effects

Colombia’s Curativa clinic reports a real-world study of 124 older adults (median age 74) in which physician-supervised cannabis treatment eased pain, insomnia and mood symptoms, with about 90% seeing at least a one-point severity reduction. Adverse events were mild and concentrated early in treatment, affecting a third of patients (mostly somnolence and dizziness), with no serious treatment-related events, falls or hospitalisations recorded; the preprint is not yet peer-reviewed.

  • Patients began treatment between January 2024 and September 2025; lead author Cristina Sánchez posted the study on Research Square on 18 August.
 
🇨🇿 Czech Republic — Government orders 16 hemp and CBD measures after inspections find a 63% violation rate

🔭 On the radar: The 16-measure package has a three-week drafting deadline falling on 14 September. Police are still analysing stock seized from the Still Chill vending machines.

🏛️ Regulation — Nine vending machines sold MDMB-PINACA to minors as 161 poisonings surface

The government ordered a 16-measure legislative crackdown on enriched technical hemp and CBD-derived psychoactive substances on 24 August, with a three-week drafting deadline, after the KORUND enforcement campaign found violations in 63% of 1,000 drug-shop inspections and seized 500,000 products. Those two numbers are the government’s whole case, and they were put into the public record the day before the package was announced.

The harm that forced the package was documented in the same month: nine Still Chill vending machines sold products containing MDMB-PINACA across six Moravian cities with no age verification, including to minors, for months before police emptied them at the end of June.

The Czech case is the leading edge of a continental problem, with EU drug agency data showing undeclared synthetic cannabinoids spreading through low-THC flower across European markets.

💼 Market — Home-grow legalisation feeds a seed market, not a product market

With home cultivation legal since January and no retail channel created alongside it, the commercial month belonged to seed sellers: Sweet Seeds launched Permanent Marker XL Auto and Super Boof XL Auto for domestic growers. Four items is a thin pool, and the thinness is itself the finding — the legal market the decriminalisation created is a seed-and-equipment market, not a product one.

🔬 Science — Half of European CBD oils fail their declared content

A decade-long analysis found that half of all CBD oils sold in Europe fail to match their declared CBD content — a quality-control finding that lands directly on the retailers the Czech government has just moved to regulate.

 
🇳🇿 New Zealand — Rua Bioscience’s export-led strategy lifts FY26 revenue 71%
💼 Market — Rua Bioscience grows FY26 revenue 71% on export deals

Rua Bioscience grew FY26 customer revenue 71% to NZ$2.58m, driven by an export-led strategy that nearly doubled Australian sales and landed a UK distribution deal worth more than NZ$10m over two years. New Czechia and Canada market entries added further reach, while the domestic scheme grew on an expanded product range.

  • Rua Bioscience’s FY26 results confirm 71% customer-revenue growth to NZ$2.58m for the year ended 30 June 2026, with total revenue at NZ$2.92m.
  • ECS Botanics’ FY26 results, published 28 August, disclosed that it shipped its first cannabis-oil batch to New Zealand’s NUBU Pharmaceuticals during the year — the exact shipment date wasn’t given, and a repeat order has since followed.

Puro and the New Zealand Medicinal Cannabis Council swept three trophies at the 2026 Cannabiz Awards, with Puro named Cultivator of the Year and co-founder Sank Macfarlane named Business Leader of the Year.

🔬 Science — Rua formalises the Wairuakohu joint venture for PET cannabinoid research

New Zealand’s science pool held one item this month: Rua Bioscience formalised the Wairuakohu joint venture for PET cannabinoid research, its only domestic R&D news of August.

 
🇩🇰 Denmark — STENOCARE posts fifth straight EBITDA-positive quarter as Q2 sales rise 33%
💼 Market — STENOCARE posts fifth profitable quarter as LGP Cannatrek upgrades its Danish facility

STENOCARE posts its fifth consecutive EBITDA-positive quarter, with Q2 2026 net sales rising 33% quarter-on-quarter to DKK 4.0m (DKK 56,000 EBITDA). First-half 2026 net sales reached DKK 7.0m, up from DKK 2.5m in the same period of 2025.

The merged Little Green Pharma-Cannatrek group approves first-stage capital investment in its existing Danish production facility, distinct from the group’s A$112m FY25 pro-forma revenue, which spans its wider Australian and European operations rather than Denmark alone.

  • The group commits capex to its Danish facility to lift capacity and quality within 180 days of the merger completing, ahead of a second stage targeting full nameplate capacity by FY28-29.
 
🇪🇺 European Union — Regulation sets Δ9-THC limits for hemp-leaf infusions, opening a beverage market from 2027

🔭 On the radar: The Court of Justice has no set timeline for answering the Dutch low-THC hemp referral. EUDA’s next cannabinoid-monitoring update follows 40 semi-synthetic compounds already tracked across Europe.

🏛️ Regulation — Hemp-leaf infusions get THC limits as the Dutch court refers low-THC hemp to the CJEU

A new EU regulation set Δ9-THC maximum levels for hemp leaves and hemp-leaf infusions at 40 mg/kg dried and 0.02 mg/kg in ready-to-drink tea, opening a beverage market from 1 January 2027. Industry figures such as Canapa Sativa Italia’s Mattia Cusani said the thresholds let producers “design real products” for the ordinary food market, including hemp-and-citrus drinks.

  • Mattia Cusani of Canapa Sativa Italia said the rules let producers design new hemp beverages for Europe’s ordinary food market, from Calabrian bergamot blends onward.
  • The Dutch Hoge Raad referred low-THC hemp import questions to the EU Court of Justice, testing whether the Opium Act’s ban on sub-0.3%-THC hemp conflicts with free movement of goods.
  • A BvCW model calculated that reaching Germany’s criminal THC threshold requires 2.5 kg of industrial hemp, putting the Rauschklausel intoxication clause under judicial pressure.

The European Commission separately simplified hemp-crop compliance checks under Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/177, giving member states more flexibility on inspection scheduling without — the Commission says — reducing THC-testing reliability. The relaxation lands the same month EU drug-agency data show new synthetic cannabinoids continuing to reach the market.

  • Brussels’ delegated act eases hemp inspection scheduling and certified-seed enforcement discretion for national authorities, leaving CAP subsidy rules intact.
  • EUDA’s 2025 monitoring found 27 new cannabinoids across Europe, 16 of them semi-synthetic, taking the tracked total to 40 — no prevalence figure specific to low-THC flower was published.
 
🇫🇷 France — Semi-synthetic CBC and THCX sell legally in CBD shops as users report compulsive use, while the medical channel has yet to open

🔭 On the radar: France’s medical-cannabis pricing decree is due for autumn publication, per Conseil d’État filings. Curaleaf’s French launch remains targeted for late 2026 or early 2027.

💼 Market — Semi-synthetic CBC and THCX sell legally in French CBD shops as users report compulsive use

Consumers and doctors reported compulsive use, hallucinations and tachycardia from CBC and THCX, two semi-synthetic cannabinoids sold legally in French CBD shops — the one part of France’s cannabinoid market trading freely, while the prescription channel beside it has yet to open. One consumer’s intake roughly doubled, from 7–8 grams a month to 15 grams every three weeks; the 15 August report records no action by ANSM, MILDECA or the government.

  • Content creator Jules Richard described being unable to stop smoking the products, a pattern he said he had not experienced with cannabis; doctors quoted in the same report warn of bad trips, hallucinations and tachycardic episodes.
  • Curaleaf, bidding for Aurora Cannabis, does not expect French operations online until late 2026 or early 2027, ranking Germany, Poland and the UK as the bloc’s live battlegrounds instead.
 
🇲🇦 Morocco — BluePearl completes its first certified seed campaign from local genetics
💼 Market — A domestic seed industry starts at Derdara

BluePearl Seeds has completed its first certified seed campaign from its facility at Derdara, in Chefchaouen province — cannabis seed “developed, multiplied, and produced in Morocco”, fully traceable, under supervision of cannabis regulator ANRAC and food-safety office ONSSA. The milestone is the company’s own first campaign; the founders frame it as the start of a Moroccan seed industry able to cut import dependence and build export potential.

  • Founders Houda El Arroussi and James Mitton have run a varietal-selection programme since 2024 to identify the best-performing varieties for Moroccan farmers and regulated markets.
  • Certified-seed customers are the legal sector’s base: farmers, cooperatives and licensed operators.
  • The campaign lands in the framework created by the 2021 legalisation law, under which ANRAC licenses cultivation, processing and export for medical and industrial use.
 
🇺🇾 Uruguay — IRCCA proposes three decree reforms as legal-user register tops 120,000

🔭 On the radar: IRCCA has given no timetable for the three decree-level reforms its director has proposed: non-resident purchase access, simultaneous multi-channel registration and company-proposed varieties.

🏛️ Regulation — IRCCA proposes non-resident purchases as JND gets a new secretary general

IRCCA set out three decree-level reforms for Uruguay’s cannabis market — non-resident purchase access, simultaneous multi-channel registration and company-proposed varieties — against a legal-cannabis register that now tops 120,000 people. The register breaks down as 90,946 pharmacy buyers, 20,798 club members and 10,330 home cultivators as of July 2026. IRCCA president Martín Rodríguez said he could not yet give an implementation timetable for any of the three.

Vice Secretary Jorge Díaz installed Aldo Tomassini as JND secretary general, promoting him from deputy director after 15 years focused on treatment and harm-reduction policy.

  • Tomassini, who holds a doctorate in psychology, takes over as JND secretary general, pledging to continue prevention, risk-reduction and inter-institutional coordination work.
💼 Market — Pharmacy prices rise UYU 15 per 5g as Flextem enters Brazil

IRCCA raised pharmacy cannabis prices for all four regulated varieties from 1 August 2026, taking Épsilon — Uruguay’s most-purchased strain — to UYU 630 per 5g. All four varieties rose by UYU 15 per 5g package.

  • IRCCA’s update raised all four prices by UYU 15 per 5g package, the month’s only reported pharmacy price change.

Uruguay-founded Flextem Biopharma entered Brazil’s pharmaceutical cannabis market through a Cannect distribution partnership, its first formal move into Latin America’s largest market.

🔬 Science — Five-year study links chronic legal use to cognitive decline

Uruguay’s research pool held a single item this month: a five-year Universidad de la República study finding that chronic legal-cannabis users show measurable memory, attention and executive-function decline, more pronounced among high-potency users. Lead researcher Rodolfo Ferrando said the changes can be reversible.

 
🇮🇪 Ireland — HSE confirms HHC-addicted children can be denied CAMHS support, as vapes sell in shops for €35
🏛️ Regulation — HHC-addicted children can be redirected away from CAMHS

The HSE confirms that referrals combining mental-health difficulties with substance-use concerns — including HHC vape addiction — can be redirected from CAMHS to primary care or addiction services, even though substance use alone does not exclude a young person from the service. HHC vapes sell in Irish shops for €35 alongside sweets, and the HSE has separately warned that HHC products are being mislabelled and sold as CBD; this is Ireland’s only in-period item this month.

  • One mother told the Irish Times her 14-year-old autistic daughter was refused a CAMHS referral over HHC addiction.
    • The Department of Health directs affected families toward Tusla, Jigsaw and disability services instead, saying CAMHS “is not suitable” where difficulties are primarily behavioural.
💼 Market — Irish-manufactured dronabinol API reaches the UK via new partnership

Dunbar Pharmaceuticals, an Irish EU-GMP-certified manufacturer, enters the UK market with its plant-derived WaterClear THC™ dronabinol API through a new partnership with IPS Pharma. IPS Pharma uses the Ireland-manufactured API in its UK cannabis-based medicinal products; Dunbar already supplies Germany through a separate importer, and the source does not describe the partnership reaching Ireland’s own market.

  • Dunbar’s Ireland-manufactured WaterClear THC™ API enters the UK market via IPS Pharma, which produces and distributes UK cannabis-based medicinal products.
 
🇦🇹 Austria — ARGE CANNA’s EU petition and Commission complaint over Austria’s flower ban are both rejected, filed 16 February

🔭 On the radar: ARGE CANNA shifts strategy toward domestic litigation, backing a Viennese multiple sclerosis patient’s home-cultivation lawsuit after its EU-level efforts failed.

🏛️ Regulation — EU rejects Austria’s flower-ban challenge; roadside stops expose THC-threshold gap

ARGE CANNA’s petition to the European Parliament (0491/2026) and complaint to the European Commission (CPLT(2026)01016) over Austria’s cannabis flower ban are both rejected, with the EU citing member states’ authority over cannabis regulation. Both procedures were filed on 16 February 2026; the source gives no date for when either was decided, only that Hanf Magazin reported the outcome on 1 August 2026.

  • The Commission found “no violation of EU law”, reasoning that a Schengen medical certificate “merely proves medical prescription in the origin country” without automatically legalising possession elsewhere.
    • ARGE CANNA now backs domestic litigation instead, supporting a Viennese multiple sclerosis patient’s lawsuit for legal home-cultivation rights.

Police roadside pre-tests reportedly flagged 24 of 29 drivers stopped after the Szene Openair festival in Lustenau for suspected impairment, exposing Austria’s lack of a legal THC threshold for driving. ARGE CANNA disputes the framing, noting saliva and urine pre-tests detect THC metabolites that can remain present for days or weeks and prove nothing about impairment at the time of driving.

  • Austria operates a de facto zero-tolerance THC standard, unlike Germany’s 3.5 ng/mL legal limit set in August 2024 — a gap that particularly disadvantages medical cannabis patients.
 
🇸🇪 Sweden — ODI Pharma’s Polish medical-cannabis unit turns profitable on tenfold sales growth to SEK32.9m

🔭 On the radar: Sweden’s classification investigator has until February 2028 to report, with group-based scheduling for HHC-type cannabinoids still to be designed and no word on separate cannabis treatment.

🏛️ Regulation — Directive orders group-based narcotics classification by February 2028

Sweden’s government issued committee directive Dir. 2026:101 on 27 August, tasking a special investigator with designing a group-based narcotics classification system by 29 February 2028 — the sole Regulation item this month, and a broad scheduling reform, not a cannabis-specific one. The directive cites semi-synthetic cannabinoids such as HHC among the substance types the new system must be able to cover.

  • The investigator must also assess emergency sale-halt powers for newly identified substances and streamline rules on regulated plant and fungal material.
💼 Market — ODI Pharma clears its debt after four straight profitable quarters

ODI Pharma’s Polish medical-cannabis subsidiary turned its FY2025/26 results around, posting SEK32.9m in net sales against SEK3.1m the year before and clearing its remaining debt — the sole Market item this month, but a clean turnaround story on its own figures. The company reported four consecutive quarters of positive EBITDA and equity solidity improving to 45% from 9%.

 
🇷🇴 Romania — Oradea-led review finds CBD’s evidence robust only in Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut syndromes
🔬 Science — Seizure reduction is real but seizure freedom uncommon, and anxiety evidence stays thin

A review led from the University of Oradea, published in Pharmaceuticals on 6 August, found that CBD produces a significant reduction in seizure frequency in drug-resistant Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut syndromes, while seizure freedom remains uncommon. The same review judged the anxiety evidence encouraging but limited, resting on small randomised controlled trials and pilot studies rather than large multicentre work.

  • The six author affiliations span four Romanian institutions — Oradea, “Ovidius” Constanța and “George Emil Palade” Târgu Mureș — alongside one Hungarian partner at the University of Debrecen.
 
🇮🇳 India — CDSCO approves 150 mg/mL CBD anxiety drug as Himachal Pradesh opens hemp licensing
🏛️ Regulation — CDSCO approves a CBD anxiety drug as Himachal Pradesh cuts hemp licence fees

CDSCO, India’s national drug regulator, approves Leiutis Pharmaceuticals’ synthetic CBD oral solution for mild-to-moderate anxiety disorders at 150 mg/mL, alongside cognitive behavioural therapy, following completed Phase III trials. The concentration exceeds both typical wellness CBD products (10–50 mg/mL) and the FDA-approved Epidiolex (100 mg/mL); the medicine is prescriber-restricted to psychiatrists and manufactured in India through Biophore India Pharmaceuticals, Leiutis and Zenara Pharma.

Himachal Pradesh’s Department of State Taxes and Excise opens industrial hemp licensing under new state excise rules, cutting the minimum cultivation plot from three acres to five bighas (about one acre). Manufacturing licence fees drop from an $11.5m minimum-investment threshold to $11,500 annually, and farmers must secure a purchase agreement with a licensed manufacturer before they can obtain a cultivation licence.

  • Cultivation licences cost ₹2,000 ($23) per bigha annually; storage, research/testing and transport permits are priced separately at $115, $1,150 and $23 respectively.
 
🇵🇰 Pakistan — Citi Pharma seeks shareholder approval to add cannabis and hemp to its Memorandum of Association

🔭 On the radar: Citi Pharma’s Extraordinary General Meeting on 18 September decides whether the charter amendment passes; a yes vote still leaves SECP, CCRA and DRAP licensing pending.

💼 Market — A shareholder vote, not yet a strategy

Citi Pharma, a PSX-listed Pakistani pharmaceutical company, proposed adding cannabis, industrial hemp and medicinal-cannabis activities to its Memorandum of Association on 28 August — a shareholder proposal, not yet a completed strategy. Next step: shareholders vote at an Extraordinary General Meeting on 18 September, and any cannabis activity would still require SECP, CCRA and DRAP approvals.

  • The planned scope spans cannabidiol and THC processing plus oils, resins and isolates, alongside pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and cosmeceutical manufacturing, medical facilities and rehabilitation centres.
🔬 Science — Pakistani-authored meta-analysis puts a number on cannabinoids for sleep

A meta-analysis led by authors at five Pakistani medical institutions pooled 10 randomised trials and 2,134 participants and found cannabinoids cut insomnia severity by 3.73 points on the Insomnia Severity Index.

  • The same analysis reports sleep quality and duration gains — PSQI −3.94, total sleep time +34 minutes, sleep efficiency +4.31% — with adverse events more frequent on cannabinoids (RR 3.96) but no serious harms recorded.
    • Authors are drawn from Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Medical University, Dow University of Health Sciences, Nishtar Medical College, Rawalpindi Medical University and Allama Iqbal Medical College.
 
🇳🇵 Nepal — Gandaki Province authenticates Nepal’s first sub-national cannabis law by overriding a first-ever veto

🔭 On the radar: Federal legislation Wagle named as a precondition for Finance Ministry facilitation has not been drafted.

🏛️ Regulation — Gandaki overrides a veto to pass its cannabis law as the finance minister signals a federal opening

Gandaki Province authenticated Nepal’s first sub-national cannabis-cultivation law on 3 August, after its assembly unanimously re-passed the bill on 31 July to override the province chief’s first-ever return of a bill in the assembly’s history. The chief had returned the bill on 24 July, citing conflicts with federal narcotics law, after the assembly’s initial passage on 14 July.

  • Three-stage licensing moves growers from preliminary approval through infrastructure build-out to final licensing, which requires a five-year land lease and a purchase agreement with a pharmaceutical or manufacturing buyer.
    • Licences run five years and cap product at 0.3% THC before harvest, storage or sale, restricted to medicinal and industrial use on designated low-productivity land.

Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle told the National Assembly on 21 August that his ministry will facilitate cannabis cultivation once it is regulated by law, according to Nepali media — the clearest federal-level opening yet, even as the Narcotic Drugs (Control) Act, 2033, still bans it nationally. He said any change requires further study and coordination with the Home Ministry before legislation follows.

 
🇸🇽 Sint Maarten — MP demands disclosure of 10-year exclusive cannabis concession
🏛️ Regulation — Ten-year concession granted before any cannabis law exists

MP Ludmila de Weever demanded disclosure of the full terms behind Native Nations Cannabis SXM’s ten-year exclusive cannabis concession during Sint Maarten’s budget debate on 27 August, noting Parliament has not yet approved any cannabis-regulating legislation. She said “What are you hiding?” after the government denied her access to the agreement’s confidential financial terms.

A University of St. Martin symposium on 14 August set out a five-pillar evidence-based framework for medical cannabis, alongside survey findings that 37.3% of surveyed 15-year-olds report cannabis use — more than double the Netherlands’ comparator rate of 16.8%. Physician and policy adviser Dr Joseph Rosado proposed protecting patients, equipping clinicians, controlling products, protecting the community and measuring outcomes as the framework’s five pillars.

  • Speakers recommended phased implementation starting with a legal and regulatory foundation, then medical pilots, then controlled expansion under evidence-based review.
 
🇿🇼 Zimbabwe — Cabinet cuts three cannabis licence fees, amounts undisclosed

🔭 On the radar: MCAZ has not yet published the exact size of its hemp and cannabis fee cuts; expect the schedule to surface as licence renewals process.

🏛️ Regulation — Cabinet cuts three MCAZ cannabis fees without disclosing amounts

Zimbabwe’s Cabinet approved cuts to three Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) fees for hemp and medicinal cannabis on 5 August, as part of a broader multi-sector “ease of doing business” package — though the government’s own briefing named the fee lines cut without disclosing the resulting amounts. The same package cut numerous other business fees and levies, from tourism to sport, but no percentage or dollar figure was given for the MCAZ hemp and cannabis lines specifically.

💼 Market — Bulawayo grower banks tax relief, terms undisclosed

Bulawayo-area cannabis farm Thathokuhle received Zimbabwean government tax relief after a site visit by Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube in late August, an incentive tied to the 44-hectare operation’s more than 80 regular jobs — the sole Market item this month, and the size of the relief was not disclosed. The farm, which has grown medicinal cannabis since 2021 alongside fish and organic-vegetable production, said staffing expands to about 100 workers at peak harvest.

 
🇸🇿 Eswatini — Draft medical-industrial cannabis bill to replace the 1922 opium law
🏛️ Regulation — Two-phase reform sidelines Swazi Gold and adult use

eSwatini’s Agriculture Ministry is drafting a medical and industrial cannabis bill that explicitly rules out adult use, Minister Mandla Tshawuka said on national television on 7 August — leaving the Kingdom’s famous Swazi Gold landrace outside the legal economy the bill is designed to create. No parliamentary debate has taken place; the ministry says drafting is “progressing well”.

  • The reform runs in two phases: Phase 1 repeals the Opium and Habit-Forming Drugs Act of 1922 and the Pharmacy Act — the statutes classifying cannabis as illegal — and Phase 2 opens the value chain for jobs and economic opportunities.
    • The law will legally distinguish industrial hemp from high-THC cannabis; Tshawuka framed medical access as transforming the health sector.
    • Ignoring Swazi Gold follows Malawi’s path, which likewise sidelined its renowned “Malawi Gold” landrace to build a low-THC sector.
  • Enforcement continues in parallel: police destroyed 25 ha of illicit plantings in the latest reported operations — 10 ha at Big Bend and 15 ha at Etimbuzulwaneni — with no arrests reported.
 
🇧🇼 Botswana — Industrial-law amendment clears the way for two pilot cannabis licences
🏛️ Regulation — July alignment joins the 2019 industrial law to the Cannabis Act

Botswana’s Parliament adopted the Industrial Development (Amendment) Bill in July, reported in August coverage — aligning the Industrial Development Act 2019 with the Cannabis Act 2025 so that cannabis manufacturing and processing no longer fall under overlapping regulatory procedures. The measure covers medical, scientific, research and industrial uses only; recreational use remains excluded.

  • Implementation is already moving: two pilot cultivation licences have been granted and a public farm at Dibete selected for the first cultivation phase, with further applications under review.
    • Licensees must collaborate with the National Institute of Agricultural Research and Development on research and skills transfer.
    • The National Cannabis Control Authority began operating this year; the regulations of 12 January 2026 govern cultivation, manufacturing, import and export, transport, distribution and research.
  • The government frames cannabis as a high-value regulated industry to diversify a diamond-dependent economy — but has published no consolidated targets for investment, acreage or export volumes.
 
🇳🇦 Namibia — High Court hands cannabis reform to the law-review commission

🔭 On the radar: The LRDC review has no public report date; the Timbo religious-freedom case is expected back in court later in 2026.

🏛️ Regulation — July ruling keeps the 1971 prohibition intact while the review runs

Namibia’s Windhoek High Court dismissed Ganja Users of Namibia’s challenge to cannabis prohibition in July, reported in August — Judge Claudia Claasen ruled the case premature because the justice minister has already mandated the Law Reform and Development Commission to review the country’s cannabis laws. Prohibition under the Abuse of Dependence-Producing Substances and Rehabilitation Centres Act of 1971 stays fully in force.

  • The 2021 challenge — brought by GUN president Brian Jaftha and secretary general Borro Ndungula — sought to strike down the ban on privacy, dignity, equality, culture and religion grounds, with relief for past convictions.
    • Claasen did not uphold prohibition on the merits: she held that the interlocked public-health, criminal-justice and economic questions belong to the executive and Parliament.
  • Pending prosecutions sustain the pressure: the Timbo religious-freedom case (2.17 kg seized in June 2021, valued above N$100,000) was postponed again this year, and the 2019 Cheryl Green case (71 plants grown for cannabis oil) remains the emblem of the medical-use grey zone.
    • A further medical-use arrest — Thillo Tietz of Henties Bay, four plants — sits in the same unresolved pattern.
  • The regional reference point is South Africa: its Constitutional Court decriminalised private use in 2018, the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act was signed in May 2024, and Parliament heard in March 2026 that the illicit market is worth ~R36 billion.
    • A full legalisation framework before year-end is unlikely, the source judges; the LRDC’s eventual recommendation — anything from retention to a regulated market — is the decision point.
 
🇱🇸 Lesotho — Banel asks the High Court to free a seized 500 kg Thai consignment

🔭 On the radar: The High Court application is pending; the Lesotho Mounted Police Service has yet to file a formal response and no hearing date has been reported.

🏛️ Regulation — Seizure of a fully permitted import reaches the courts

Banel, a licensed Leribe-based cannabis processor, has sued the Lesotho Mounted Police for the return of 500 kg of Thai-grown dried flower seized at Maseru’s Moshoeshoe I airport in February — an import it says was permitted on 27 February and fully customs-cleared, now deteriorating in custody with 1.2 million Maloti tied up. Lesotho media first reported the urgent application on 30 July; the police service has yet to formally respond.

  • The respondents sit at the top of the enforcement chain: Police Commissioner Borotho Matsoso and Attorney General Rapelang Motsieloa.
  • Banel’s affidavit describes a shifting justification — police first said they were tallying the consignment, opened it before the promised joint inspection, then refused a June release request after receiving full documentation.
    • The shipment — OG Kush, Cookie Gelato, Northern Lights and four other named strains — was bound for pharmaceutical processing at Banel’s licensed Leribe facility.
  • The company argues no lawful basis exists for holding the cannabis and that prolonged detention of a sensitive medicinal product is destroying its value.
 
🇷🇼 Rwanda — KKOG’s flagship stalls at 80% built as a US$2.5m state commitment goes unpaid
💼 Market — A US$1.75m budget gap behind the stall

KKOG Rwanda has halted construction of its Musanze facility at 80% complete, saying the Rwanda Development Board never disbursed US$2.5 million committed in a signed MoU — while the Rwanda Innovation Fund’s entire 2023/24 cannabis budget was Rwf1.1 billion (~US$750,000), a US$1.75 million shortfall. CEO Rene Joseph also cites unresolved land-title issues on the Musanze site.

  • KKOG was the first company licensed under Rwanda’s 2021 framework — a five-year cultivation, processing and export licence secured in 2024 — and has invested ~US$10–12 million (CNBC Africa’s October 2025 upward revision), all now on hold.
  • The political signal cut the other way in July: President Kagame’s cabinet awarded a new cultivation and processing concession to InipasvalleyRw Ltd on 24 July under the same High-Value Therapeutic Crops Project, with no mention of KKOG.
    • Seedteva’s advisory reads the saga as the benchmark for whether Rwanda’s cannabis bet is “producing real capital deployment or mostly press releases”.
 
🇲🇼 Malawi — Invegrow and LUANAR put cannabis cultivation training on an institutional footing
💼 Market — Regulator, university and producer align on skills

Invegrow and LUANAR have run a hands-on cultivation training for ten agriculture students at Invegrow’s 31-hectare Nangula estate outside Lilongwe, backed by the Cannabis Regulatory Authority — institutionalising skills transfer in a sector Malawi wants to move towards value addition.

  • Students worked the production cycle — fertigation and greenhouses, mother plants and clones, then open-field plots from transplanting to near-harvest — under contamination-control protocols.
  • The university–regulator–producer partnership is explicit about the next step: value addition as the sustainability-centred focus for Malawi’s cannabis industry.
    • Invegrow’s objectives this year include developing hemp and CBD varieties for Malawi and the SADC region, working with farmer groups and cooperatives on hemp grain.
  • Invegrow brings the sector’s longest track record: Malawi’s first cannabis agronomy research licence (2013) and one of the CRA’s first cultivation and processing authorisations (2021); its GACP hybrid model combines greenhouses and outdoor THC and CBD flower, hang-dried and cured on-site.
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