Armenia legalises industrial hemp

In June 2021 Armenia’s parliament legalised a plant that Armenians had eaten, pressed for oil and written about for fifteen centuries, and that their police had been pulling out of the ground. The law covers only industrial hemp, and it was written for companies, not for farmers.

From announcement to law in five months

Date	Step
4 February 2021	The cabinet announces the plan
29 April 2021	The government approves the bill
June 2021	The National Assembly passes it
15 July 2021	A government decision sets the conditions
26 January 2022	Six companies hold licences

The plan came as part of a programme to revive the economy after the pandemic and the war. The deputy prime minister, Tigran Avinyan, said about 40% of the country’s farmland was not in use. The prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, said there were risks but that other countries had tested ways of managing them, and that nothing would be grown for human consumption. The economy minister promised that law enforcement would watch over the whole process.

What the law allows

Hemp is defined as cannabis with no more than 0.3% THC. It may be produced and processed under licence from the health ministry. The conditions are narrow:

• only companies may apply, with a capital of at least 10 million drams, about 20,000 dollars
• a licence runs for up to ten years, and production must start within one year
• there are two kinds, one for growing and one for import, export and processing
• hemp may be grown only on the land named in the licence, and only in greenhouses

All six licence holders in early 2022 had been founded in 2021 and had Armenian owners.

An old plant

A study published in 2025 traced hemp through Armenian sources from the fifth century, when Yeznik Koghbatsi wrote of its seed as a medicine, to seed powder sold in Yerevan’s markets in 2020. In between come a fifteenth-century physician’s notes, a folklorist’s record of 1876 of roasted seeds and oil for fasting days, and a New Year sweet. Fibre mattered less: a botanist in 1930 found that Armenians preferred wool.

When the researchers went looking for people who remembered these uses, in 2018, many refused to talk. Those who did said the police destroy the plants.

Why the index did not move

The index scores what a person may do with cannabis as a drug. The hemp law changed none of that: growing cannabis remains a crime for an individual in Armenia, and possession of a small amount remains an administrative offence with a heavy fine, as it has been since 2008. Hemp production is described in the profile, outside the score.^[1][2][3][4]