Over the past two months, Portugal's medical cannabis sector has been dealing with more turbulence than growth. A grower active in the country, who asked not to be named, told MMJDaily that the new regulatory framework is slowing business down, on top of the trust issues created by police raids earlier this year.
Back in May, Portuguese police raided several licensed cannabis operators for alleged links to organized crime. That alone dented the international perception of the country's industry. Since then, the situation has worsened. Multiple licenses have been pulled in recent weeks. According to the grower, "they had certain certificates, but made moves they thought were authorized and weren't." Police intervention followed, stressing that regulators cannot authorize procedures that aren't legal in the first place.
This is where the market now finds itself: with Inframed, Portugal's regulatory body, tightening oversight and adding new paperwork requirements. Certificates and authorizations that were once relatively straightforward have become sticking points, with responsibility increasingly pushed onto companies themselves. "How can I validate an import certificate from the other side of the world?" the grower asked. "If a German company receives a certificate from me, they assume it's legitimate. But if their regulator doesn't validate it, the only way is to call Inframed. And they don't pick up the phone."
The new regulations introduced a couple of months ago only add to the friction. Operators are now asked to file reports that go far beyond previous requirements. They must declare not only their genetics, but also how many cuttings they take from each mother plant, their weights, and even the weight of discarded leaves. "It's absurd," the grower said. "You can't standardize the weight of clones. Water them and they double. What does that tell anyone? Nothing."
Even green waste disposal has become more complicated. The new rules say leaves must be collected in bags and weighed before disposal. But waste collectors don't accept plastic bags. The grower explained: "We fill the bags, weigh them, and then we need to pay an extra fee to the garbage collectors to empty the bags."
For Portugal's medical cannabis space, this has created an ever-shifting regulatory ground that has made scaling, exports, and day-to-day operations much harder. The result is a market slowed not by lack of demand, but by a regulatory climate that keeps operators in constant uncertainty.
