Are Moroccan cannabis growers able to adapt to recent European market trend?

Abstract

For over fifty years, European demand for cannabis has been riving the Moroccan cannabis offer. While European demand canot on its own explain the full extent of cannabis growing in orocco, its increase during the 1960s encouraged small farmers in he Rif mountains, in the north of Morocco, to specialise in the prouction of hashish aimed at the European market, where previously hey used to produce herbal cannabis mainly for local consumption. ubsequently, during the 1980s and 1990s, Morocco became the eading producer and exporter of hashish for the European market. owever, over the past ten years, European cannabis cultivation as increased in a significant way. The evolution of techniques, preading of know-how, availability of seeds on the Internet, and tores dedicated to cultivation equipment for indoor growers allow uropean countries to produce their own cannabis (Ben Lakhdar Weinberger, 2011; Decorte, Potter, & Bouchard, 2011; Jansen, 002). Cannabis consumers now have access to diverse and powrful products that compete with Moroccan hashish. But growers in he Rif have been confronted on a number of occasions with evoluions in European demand. Encouraged by European and Moroccan iddlemen, they have each time adopted new strategies that have trengthened their black-market economy of cannabis production. his paper aims to show how, when everything seems to indicate hat the Moroccan cannabis market declines because of changes in uropean demand, new strategies are appearing which are reconguring the structure of cannabis growing in Morocco. To illustrate his point, we will first go back over a few of the significant events hat have marked trends in the Moroccan cannabis offer since the 960s.