Zimbabwe recently scrapped rules requiring sole State ownership for cannabis farming to encourage investment in the plant for industrial and medicinal use.

Authorities are of the expectation that export earnings will from cannabis will start replacing tobacco as farmers seek higher earnings from the crop.

The development has prompted authorities to widen their scope in the regulation of medicinal products which emerge thereof.

A memo seen by NewZimbabwe.com directed to all licensed cannabis / hemp producers, manufacturers' importers/exporters and retail pharmacists, MCAZ acting director general, Richard Rukwata placed all such products commonly referred to as Cannabiddol (CBD) under regulation.

"The authority recognises CBD as a complementary medicine. CBD interacts with the human body in various way and one critical mechanism of CBD action being its ability to enhance intrinsic signaLling of the endocannabinoid anandamide by decreasing cellular uptake and fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) -mediated catabolism," he said.

Rukwata said, according to the Medicines and Allied Substances Control Regulations Statutory Instrument 97 of 2015, complementary medicines means are made of any substance or mixture which is used or is manufactured sold or represented as suitable for use in mitigation or prevention of a disease or abnormal physical mental state or the symptoms thereof in human beings or in animals.

Such substances serve the purpose of restoring, correcting or modifying any physical, mental or organic function in man or in animals which originates from a plant, mineral, animal insect.

"... taking the above definition into consideration, any CBD product that is presented in pharmaceutical form or any CBD infused product shall be as registrable as a complementary medicine.

"The Authority would also like to clarify that it does not regulate industrial hemp and thus recognises hemp seed oil as any edible substance derived from hemp seeds as foodstuffs," added Rukwata.