Medical Cannabis Production in Spain Soars by 42%

The production of medical cannabis in Spain with administrative authorization continues to grow, despite the fact that its use has not yet been regulated in the country.

At the end of 2024, the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) reported a production of 51.3 tons of cannabis for medical purposes, 42.5% more than at the beginning of the year, when Spain had already placed itself in the G7, among the top seven countries in the world with the highest volume of production of these products.

Such a large production comes from entities and companies that grow cannabis for medical or research purposes with licenses approved by the AEMPS, an agency of the Ministry of Health, in accordance with the requirements established in a regulation approved in 1967 during the regime of Francisco Franco.

Currently, there are already 27 licenses, 150% more than there were five years ago. But everything produced with them must be destined for export , because the sick people in Spain who could benefit from its use are still awaiting the approval of the royal decree that regulates its dispensation, the process of which was initiated by the Ministry of Health almost a year ago in response to the request submitted by the Congress of Deputies in June 2022.

In the absence of official statistics on the sector, the production forecasts for substances included in the lists of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 , which each country must notify annually to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), are a good indicator of the situation of this market. These data reflect the progress of medicinal cannabis production in Spain, according to the estimates made by the entities authorized by the AEMPS, which must communicate what they are going to produce in the new year and what they have collected in the previous one each time they have to renew the administrative cultivation license.

In January 2024, the AEMPS notified the INCB of a forecast of 36 tonnes of medicinal cannabis, an amount that represented an increase of 53% compared to what it had reported in 2023, a year in which, in turn, the production of legal medicinal cannabis in Spain had quadrupled . And as Público has been able to verify , the 2024 financial year finally closed with another spectacular increase in production, since our country surpassed the 50-ton barrier by reporting 51,327 kilos, that is, 42.5% more than expected at the beginning of the year.

Spain surpassed the 50-ton barrier by reporting 51,327 kilos, that is, 42.5% more than expected at the beginning of the year

With these figures, Spain closed the last year among the top eight countries in the world with the highest production of cannabis for medicinal use, only surpassed by Great Britain , with 406.1 tons, Canada (294.6 tons), Uruguay (114.6), Australia (97.2), Israel (91.5), Colombia (81.5) and Germany (66.2), all of them territories where the therapeutic use of cannabis is regulated and, in some cases, also the recreational use. Spain’s figures also exceed other countries that have already legalized the medicinal use of this substance, such as Italy , which reported 2.7 tons, Denmark (15) or Portugal (32).

Patients in countries that have already approved regulatory processes are those who can benefit from cannabis produced in Spain, such as the dried flowers exported to Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom and Italy by the company Linneo Health , heir to the Spanish morphine giant Alcalíber, with a declared capacity to produce 25 tons per year in its greenhouses in the province of Murcia.

According to the AEMPS, in addition to exports to other countries, the production of medicinal cannabis authorized in Spain is destined for the manufacture of the only two medicines made with cannabinoids that are permitted in our country, Sativex and Epidiolex, used in the treatment of spasticity in multiple sclerosis and some childhood epilepsies, as well as for research projects.

A sector that generates 500 million a year

A report on the situation of the medical cannabis market in Spain, prepared in 2024 by the consultancy firm specialising in the sector Cannamonitor, reveals that in our country there are already some 60 companies working in this field, which have made investments worth a total of 115 million euros, mainly in facilities located in the south.

According to this study, despite the regulatory complexity that has limited access to the legal market, the medicinal cannabis sector in Spain has experienced significant growth since 2021, generating more than 500 million euros in annual revenue, creating nearly 7,000 jobs and contributing 132 million euros per year in taxes and Social Security contributions.

However, the lack of regulation greatly reduces the possibilities of this sector, according to the Cannamonitor report, which in 2024 limited the income of companies to the sales of the only two drugs authorized in Spain, the export of dried flower by Linneo Health, the transformation for re-export of imported flower carried out by Medalchemy, the sale of genetics from various entities and the sterilization services provided by some companies.

“Regulation is an essential first step, but we are late and it will fall short,” Cannamonitor founder Arnau Valdovinos told Público . “The focus of companies will continue to be on exports, because here it will only serve a few hundred patients out of the 250,000 to half a million who could benefit from more ambitious regulation,” adds this consultant.

Arnau Valdovinos: Regulation is an essential first step, but we are late and it will fall short

The Ministry of Health, headed by Mónica García, brought to public hearing in October the draft royal decree regulating medicinal cannabis, which is limited to the dispensing of master formulas made with extracts of components of that plant for the treatment of four conditions or ailments: spasticity due to sclerosis multiple, severe forms of refractory epilepsy, nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy, and refractory chronic pain , which is pain that no longer responds to standard treatments such as opioids.

The draft decree, which was open to public comment until 21 October and is still pending approval , establishes that prescriptions may only be made by specialist doctors who treat patients with the permitted indications, provided that the already authorised medicines do not achieve satisfactory control of the symptoms. In addition, authorised magistral formulas may only be dispensed in hospital pharmacies, not in community pharmacies on the street. The Ministry of Health has not responded to questions from this newspaper about the expected time frame for the approval of the decree.

Majority of foreign capital

The Cannamonitor report provides a detailed analysis of the sector in Spain since the Cordoba company Phytoplant, founded in 2008, submitted the first application to the AEMPS to research in the field of genetics and cannabinoid extraction, until today, on the verge of regulation, including the first license granted in 2016 to Alcalíber for medicinal production.

According to this study, five large projects account for almost two thirds of the investment made in this sector and a single company accounts for half of it, Linneo Health, 60% owned by the British fund GHO and 40% by an investment vehicle owned by Juan Abelló, the Spanish magnate who led the world production of morphine for the pharmaceutical industry with Alcalíber. Murcia, Córdoba, Alicante, Málaga and Soria are the provinces with the largest investments in medicinal cannabis.

As for the origin of the capital of these companies, the majority, 54%, is foreign , concentrated in a few projects, but they are the largest. The United Kingdom and the United States are the countries from which most of this investment capital comes, estimated at around 34 million euros, while companies from Canada, where the largest medicinal cannabis production companies are located, have barely been involved in the Spanish market.

The first forecasts for Spanish production in this new year, 2025 , although lower than the initial ones of the previous year, remain among the ten largest in the world, according to the quantities notified to the INCB consulted by this newspaper. Spain has initially reported an estimate of 25.3 tons of cannabis for medicinal use, a quantity that has only been exceeded by Canada (234.8 tons), Australia (101.6), Great Britain (101.2), Colombia (86), Israel (74), Germany (45), Uruguay (42.2), Portugal (37.1) and Denmark (28).

Arnau Valdovinos, however, does not trust the INCB figures very much, since, in his opinion, they are based on estimates that do not match the reality of the market. He thus denies, for example, that Spain produced more than Portugal, as reflected in the data for 2024, or that it reached 84 tonnes, as was reported at some point in 2020. What he does estimate is that Spanish production of medicinal cannabis has doubled in the last year and that it has been able to reach an export that he places below ten tonnes.

The two grams of cannabis that Morocco declares

A striking case in point among the data provided by the INCB is that of Morocco , which has only reported to this international regulatory body the testimonial production of two grams of cannabis, despite the fact that the National Agency for the Regulation of Activities Related to Cannabis (ANRAC) of the government of that country declared that the production of legal cannabis multiplied almost 14-fold in 2024, reaching 4,082.4 tonnes, after having approved the regulation of its medicinal use.

Another case is that of the USA , a cannabis giant, where most of its states have already legalised the medicinal use of this plant and which only reports an annual production of three tonnes. This apparent gap is due to the fact that the INCB statistics only collect data provided by the US federal administration , which has not yet approved the regulation of cannabis in the general legislation of the whole country.

Illegal production, meanwhile, does not stop. Drug traffickers located in Spain are the largest suppliers of illicit cannabis in Europe, where they monopolize 20% of the clandestine market, according to the Cannamonitor report for 2024, which estimates that they earn more than 2 billion euros from sales within our country alone.

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(Featured image by Joaquin Aranoa via Pixabay)

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