Hemp
Fibre and food hemp, THC limits, CBD and low-THC products, seed rules and the hemp industry.
91 entries, 1563–2027 · 0 moved a score · back to the whole history
World average score and Hemp entries per decade
13.2 today, from 99.1 in 1860
World average score, every country counted the same Entries that moved a score Context only
No entries for the chosen countries here.
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🇺🇸 United States · Missouri Hemp ✓
Missouri lets cultivators bring in low-THC genetics
On 21 October the Division of Cannabis Regulation issued a variance, effective 12 November, so that a licensed cultivator may acquire plants, tissue culture, pollen and other genetic material of no more than 0.3 per cent total THC from outside the state's licensed cultivation system. Plants under two inches above the root are presumed to meet that limit; taller plants need a test. Marijuana sold in the state must still be grown in a Missouri-licensed facility. Seeds from a plant over 0.3 per cent total THC count as marijuana even if the seed itself is low in THC, and taking those seeds from an unlicensed source is unlawful. New material has to be entered in the tracking system on the day it arrives.
🇦🇷 Argentina Hemp ✓
Argentina sets horticultural hemp licences at 1% THC
ARICCAME Resolution 69/2026, adopted on 2 September and published on 3 September, creates four licences for horticultural hemp: growing it, making derivatives, related services, and foreign trade. A crop at or below 1 per cent total THC on a dry-weight basis meets the limit; between 1 and 2.5 per cent is an administrative margin, not an automatic breach. Article 12 puts the resolution into force 30 administrative working days after publication. The agency's own page says applications open during October, so the publication day was not a day on which anyone could already apply.
🇹🇷 Türkiye Hemp ✓
Türkiye rewrites its hemp cultivation rules
A new regulation on growing and controlling hemp allows fibre, seed and stalk production in 21 provinces with a permit from the local administrative authority. Growing for medicines and health products is confined to the state alkaloid factory site, organised agricultural zones or secure indoor facilities approved by the health ministry, with applications to the state grain board.
🇧🇼 Botswana Hemp ✓
Botswana publishes rules for industrial cannabis with a 0.7% THC limit
Regulations published in January allow licensed farming, processing, transport, research and trade in what the government calls industrial cannabis, with a THC limit of 0.7 per cent. Cultivation licences run for three years and manufacturing licences for five. Applicants must supply site maps, security clearance, crop plans, THC testing protocols and proof of financial capacity, which some politicians called elitist. Marijuana and CBD remain illegal. In February the second licence went to a company linked to a Swedish hemp firm, and the finance minister said trials would begin at the agricultural university.
🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates Hemp ✓
The UAE's industrial-hemp law takes effect
The federal decree regulating industrial and medical uses of industrial hemp, issued on 1 October 2025, took effect on 1 January 2026. It allows licensed cultivation at or below 0.3% THC in secured zones, licensed import and export of approved seeds by agricultural companies, and authorised medical products that contain hemp compounds. Personal and recreational use stay prohibited, as do hemp foods, supplements, veterinary products and smoking products. An emirate may prohibit or restrict an activity. Whether any cultivation licence has been issued, or any product is in a pharmacy, was not verified.
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🇰🇿 Kazakhstan Hemp ✓
Kazakhstan legalises industrial hemp
The president signed a law allowing hemp to be grown for industry. Government rules approved in September let only licensed companies grow listed varieties with up to 0.3% THC, from original or elite registered seed, on fenced and guarded fields at least 2 km from settlements and roads. Crops are tested twice and destroyed if over the limit. Individuals may not grow.
🇿🇲 Zambia Hemp ✓
Zambia brings the Industrial Hemp Act into force
The Industrial Hemp Act (Commencement) Order, 2024, published in the Gazette of 3 January 2025, brings the Act into operation on the date of that publication. A licence is required to grow, process, distribute, buy, export or research hemp of not more than 0.3% THC. The Cannabis Act, published on the same day in 2021, is still not in force.
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🇺🇸 United States Hemp ✓
The DEA says cannabis seeds are not federally controlled
Answering a lawyer's inquiry, the Drug Enforcement Administration wrote that marijuana seed with no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight meets the 2018 definition of hemp and is not controlled, and likewise tissue culture and other genetic material. A second letter in December 2022 added that material grown from a seed is marijuana once it exceeds 0.3%.
🇨🇿 Czechia Hemp ✓ Article
Czechia raises the hemp limit to 1% THC
The amendment raised the threshold for technical hemp from 0.3% to 1% THC, removed its permit requirement and simplified proof of compliance for growers. Farms larger than 100 square metres still had to report specified information to customs.
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🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Hemp ✓ Article
Zimbabwe sets permits and testing rules for hemp growers and traders
Hemp growers, researchers and merchants received separate permit routes, with commercial growing and merchant permits lasting one year and research permits three years. The Agricultural Marketing Authority required approved varieties, security checks, seed and harvest records, and testing under a 0.3% THC definition. These rules followed the 2019 authorisation of approved hemp farmers; the criminal code later adopted a broader 1% hemp definition in 2023.
🇵🇰 Pakistan Hemp ✓
Pakistan approves industrial hemp
The federal government approved growing hemp for industrial use and allowed cannabis extracts for industrial and medical purposes.
🇲🇱 Mali Hemp ✓
Mali withdraws its hemp-growing authorisation
Mali withdrew the industrial-hemp authorisation granted in 2017 for a supervised production project. Central drug office director Adama Tounkara said the producers had sought to change the agreed terms, leading to a new decision cancelling permission. He confirmed the withdrawal at a May press conference as claims that the project was still operating circulated on social media.
🇷🇺 Russia Hemp ✓
Russia sets a 0.1% THC limit for industrial hemp
Government Resolution 101 of 6 February allowed registered varieties of hemp to be grown for industry if the leaves and flowering tops hold no more than 0.1% THC, and barred seed of the fourth and later generations. It replaced a 2007 resolution on hemp varieties. For medicine it allowed the opium poppy, not cannabis. The hemp area had grown to 10,200 hectares in 2019.
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🇧🇬 Bulgaria Hemp ✓
Bulgaria denies that it has legalised growing cannabis
Public radio reported that farmers could now grow cannabis legally and that about 100 hectares were already sown, and headlines announced legalisation. The agriculture ministry answered that it had only drafted a regulation on hemp for industry, repeating rules in force since 2001: varieties must hold less than 0.2% THC, and plants above that are confiscated and destroyed.
🇨🇳 China Hemp ✓
Heilongjiang opens industrial hemp growing
Heilongjiang became the second Chinese province, after Yunnan, to allow industrial hemp to be grown, processed and sold. Jilin planned a hemp chapter in its anti-drug regulations in 2018, but the version adopted in 2022 left it out.
🇲🇱 Mali Hemp ✓ Article
Mali authorises a company's hemp-growing project for medical exports
Mali granted African Seeds permission to grow industrial hemp for seed exports intended for medical use, under conditions supervised by the authorities. Reported licence terms required approved seed and a variety with no more than 0.2% THC, and a 2018 amendment added oil to the authorised exports. The central drug office later confirmed the 2017 authorisation and said it had been withdrawn in February 2020 after the producers sought changes to its terms.
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🇧🇾 Belarus Hemp ✓ Article
Belarus lists hemp among plants barred from introduction and establishment
Cannabis sativa appeared on a revised environmental list prohibiting the introduction and establishment of specified plants from 31 December 2016. The Environment Ministry also removed the rule’s earlier reference to wild-growing plants. Drug-producing cultivation was already prohibited under the narcotics law and punished separately in the criminal code.
🇮🇹 Italy Hemp ✓ Article
Italy's hemp law opens the door to 'cannabis light'
Law 242 of 2016, in force from 2017, let farmers sow certified hemp seed with less than 0.2% THC without authorisation and tolerated crops testing up to 0.6%. Shops began selling the flowers. In September 2018 the interior minister, Matteo Salvini, ordered zero tolerance towards them, and in May 2019 the Court of Cassation ruled the sale of buds, oils and resins illegal unless they have no narcotic effect.
🇨🇾 Cyprus Hemp ✓ Article
Cyprus licenses hemp farming and trade at up to 0.2% THC
Farmers and suppliers gained a licence-based route for industrial hemp containing no more than 0.2% THC. The law required registered premises, controlled seed and crop records, while a companion amendment separated qualifying hemp from the narcotics restrictions. In 2024 parliament replaced the agricultural definition with a reference to the EU’s 0.3% limit.
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🇲🇪 Montenegro Hemp ✓ Article
Montenegro sets permit rules for hemp farmers and their whole harvest
New permit rules covered food and industrial hemp containing no more than 0.2% THC in dry plant material. Farmers had to identify their land, variety, certified seed and planned sowing and harvest, supply a whole-crop purchase-contract number, and report hemp-growing land by 1 May each year. Agriculture Minister Petar Ivanović signed the rules under the earlier drug law, which required the whole harvest to reach the contracted buyer within four months.
🇭🇷 Croatia Hemp ✓
Croatia promises hemp farmers an end to burning their stalks
Under the drug abuse act hemp growers could keep only the seed, for oil, and had to destroy the rest of the plant, although its THC was below the European limit of 0.2%. After a Croatian member of the European Parliament obtained a reply from the Commission, the health ministry said it was preparing an amendment to allow hemp for building, textiles, paper and other industries. The change came into force in April 2019.
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🇷🇸 Serbia Hemp ✓ Article
Serbia sets annual hemp permits and a THC limit below 0.3%
Hemp growers had to use registered varieties containing less than 0.3% THC and apply for a permit before sowing, by 30 April each year. Agriculture Minister Goran Knežević’s rules required seed and land documents, checks for drug convictions and a permit valid for one production year. They put the 2010 law’s licensed fibre-and-seed crop rules into practice.
🇱🇹 Lithuania Hemp ✓
Lithuania lifts its ban on growing hemp
Lithuania had been the only EU country to prohibit industrial hemp. Products with a little THC were allowed from 2021.
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🇱🇻 Latvia Hemp ✓
Latvian farmers sow hemp again
Fibre hemp was sown in Latvia again, 114 hectares of it by farmers around Krāslava, in the east. Hemp had once stood beside flax among the country's main crops, and in the nineteenth century the British fleet used ropes of Riga hemp. A textile-industry leader warned growers that they could end up at a police station, proving for half a year that their plants held nothing harmful.
🇮🇹 Italy Hemp ✓
Italy allows hemp seeds in food
Companies had asked to use hemp in baked goods, flour, sweets, oils and supplements. The health ministry answered that hemp seeds and products made from them could be used as food, because the seeds contain no THC; traces come only from flower parts clinging to them. Producers stayed responsible for safety checks, and the drug law's ban on advertising for cannabis still applied.
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🇸🇮 Slovenia Hemp ✓
Slovenia aligns permitted hemp varieties with the referenced EU list
An amendment replaced the hemp-permit rules' national variety-list reference with Annex II of Commission Regulation 796/2004 as amended, while retaining the ceiling of 0.2 percent THC in dry matter. It also revised application details to identify the farm and the agricultural land-use units and areas planted with each variety. This adjusted the existing agricultural permit system without establishing personal recreational cultivation rights. The reproduced original identifies publication on 24 September 2007 and commencement the following day.
🇱🇻 Latvia Hemp ✓
Latvia adds a duty to destroy prohibited cannabis while retaining open-field hemp growing
A further amendment to Article 6(2), effective on 7 June, retained permission to grow Cannabis sativa subsp. sativa for fibre, seed and horticultural purposes only in open fields. It replaced the sentence delegating cultivation procedures to the Cabinet with an express duty on landowners or lawful possessors to destroy cannabis growing on their land that the law prohibited. The open-field restriction already appeared in the 2006 text; the amendment was not the first authorisation of fibre hemp.
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🇵🇹 Portugal Hemp ✓ Article
Portugal puts non-sowing cannabis seed under its drug law
Law 47/2003, the tenth amendment to the 1993 drug law, added "cannabis seeds not intended for sowing" to Table I-C, alongside the drug PMMA in another table. It took effect the day after publication.
🇸🇪 Sweden Hemp ✓
European court rejects Sweden's ban on authorised industrial hemp
In Hammarsten, case C-462/01, the Court of Justice held that the EU hemp-market regulations precluded national rules prohibiting cultivation and possession of industrial hemp covered by those regulations. The case concerned a Swedish farmer's 2001 crop, not a right to grow intoxicating cannabis. A September 2004 parliamentary motion confirms that industrial hemp cultivation had again become permissible in early 2003, subject to restrictive conditions.
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🇨🇭 Switzerland Hemp ✓
Switzerland upholds cannabis-sachet convictions despite scent-product labelling
In BGE 126 IV 198, the Federal Supreme Court rejected a hemp-shop operator's challenge concerning cannabis sold as scented sachets and pillows. The products contained 0.5–2.5 percent THC; the Court used existing agricultural and food limits as benchmarks, including the then 0.3 percent industrial-hemp limit. It held that conditional intent could suffice when the seller knowingly accepted narcotic use of the products. Signed warnings to customers did not overcome the circumstances demonstrating that acceptance. The judgment applied existing prohibition rather than creating a new statutory THC threshold.
🇨🇾 Cyprus Hemp ✓ Article
Cyprus bans seed sales made with knowledge of illegal growing plans
Supplying, offering or selling cannabis seeds became an offence when the seller knew the recipient intended to grow illegally. The new rule allowed up to eight years in prison, a fine of up to 1,500 Cyprus pounds, or both, subject to regulatory exceptions. Licensed industrial hemp received a separate route in 2016, and the seed clause was widened to imports in 2019.
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🇮🇹 Italy Hemp ✓
Italian growers found Assocanapa to revive industrial hemp
Hemp growers set up Assocanapa, the national coordination for hemp farming, in Carmagnola, Piedmont, in 1998. Parrella describes how it went on to work on Italian hemp varieties, seed supply and processing technology. It speaks for hemp as a farm and industrial crop.
🇨🇦 Canada Hemp ✓ Article
Canada starts its licensed industrial-hemp programme
Health Canada dates the Industrial Hemp Regulation Program to 12 March 1998, following research in 1994–1998. The first commercial growing licence followed in May 1998. This was a controlled industrial-hemp route, not general recreational cultivation permission.