Uzbekistan licenses industrial cannabis below 0.2% THC

Uzbekistan opened a narrow legal route for low-THC cannabis in 2020. The change concerns licensed industrial activity—not personal cultivation, recreational possession or an adult retail market.

A cannabis-specific exception

Law ZRU-612 of 17 March 2020 inserted Article 21¹ into Uzbekistan’s 1999 law on narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. The official Lex.uz text marks the amendment as published on 18 March 2020.

Article 21¹ permits cannabis containing no more than 0.2% tetrahydrocannabinol for industrial purposes unrelated to the production or manufacture of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. It is one of the few places in the consolidated act where cannabis is named directly rather than handled through a general controlled-drug schedule.

What a licence covers

The exception is limited to legal entities holding a licence for the activity. It covers cultivation, import and export, processing, storage, sale or dispensing, acquisition and transport. Individuals do not receive a corresponding right to grow plants at home or possess ordinary cannabis for personal use.

The Cabinet of Ministers determines which varieties may be cultivated and circulated, together with the conditions governing those activities. Lex.uz links the provision to a December 2020 Cabinet resolution on regulating industrial cannabis use and cultivation.

Still inside the control system

The amendment also changed the law’s state-monopoly rule so the licensed industrial exception could operate. Outside Article 21¹, cultivation of plants on the most restrictive narcotics list remained available to state institutions for scientific purposes under the authorised body’s procedure. A 2025 amendment later allowed licensed legal entities to cultivate under the industrial exception while retaining that scientific route.

This makes the reform historically important but narrow. It created a regulated crop sector within the Uzbekistan profile; it did not undo the personal-use restrictions established under the broader 1999 narcotics framework.

In the index, the 2020 amendment is a context event and moves no score. Industrial cannabis below 0.2% THC lies outside the six recreational-freedom segments, while possession, home growing, sharing, consumption and adult access remained unchanged.^[1]