December 2019 was a month of legal changes in Ecuador. First, the Organic Law Reforming the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code was published. Still, it was not until June 2020 that it came into force, reforming the Organic Law for the Comprehensive Prevention of the Socioeconomic Phenomenon of Drugs and the Regulation and Control of the Use of Listed Substances Subject to Control. The magazine Industria Legal dedicates a page to the information offered about this matter by our expert partner in Regulatory Law, Felipe Samaniego since this reform gave way to Ecuador's new cannabis and hemp industry.

The exclusion of substances subject to control to cannabis and hemp with less than 1% THC in dry weight and a term of 120 days for the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock to issue the corresponding regulation are among the new reforms.

Not only that, but also, through this agreement, new guidelines are established applicable to the regime of seven licenses, different for each activity allowed in the non-psychoactive cannabis industry, hemp and hemp for industrial use, "from the import and production of seeds to the production and export of derivatives, biomass and/or flowers," according to Samaniego.

Our expert ends his article stating that "the rapid development of the regulatory framework that regulates the activities of agroindustrial activities, by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, caused that both the Ministry of Health and the National Agency for Regulation, Control, and Sanitary Surveillance (ARCSA) as well as the Agency for the Regulation and Control of Phytosanitary and Zoosanitary (AGROCALIDAD) issue the normative bodies that regulate finished products destined for human and veterinary use and consumption that have derivatives of non-psychoactive cannabis or hemp in their composition ".

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Originally published by Industria Legal

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