Reflections from the Transnational Research Centre on Emerging Drug Markets workshop in Accra, 10–12 September 2026
As Ghana moves to implement its framework for medicinal and industrial cannabis, an important question is emerging: who will benefit from the legal market, and who risks being left behind?
This question was at the centre of Building a Shared Vision of Economic Justice in a Time of Uncertainty, a workshop convened in Accra by the Transnational Research Centre on Emerging Drug Markets (TRC-EDM), hosted by Loughborough University. UNITE’s Drug Policy Lead in Ghana participated in the workshop alongside regulators, researchers and other stakeholders.
The discussions offered a useful opportunity to consider Ghana’s cannabis reforms beyond the passage of legislation. Establishing a legal market is one stage of reform. The regulatory arrangements, institutional capacity and decisions that follow will substantially shape how the market develops and whose interests it serves.
For UNITE, the workshop raised important questions about the role legislators can play in scrutinising implementation and ensuring that reform remains responsive to the people and communities it affects.
Who benefits from an emerging legal market?
Economic justice was a central theme throughout the workshop. Participants deliberated on the possibility that formalising the cannabis economy could reproduce existing inequalities if licensing requirements, investment arrangements and access to markets disproportionately favour actors with greater capital and institutional resources.
A legal market does not automatically guarantee equitable participation. Farmers, smaller producers and communities historically associated with cannabis may face difficulties meeting licensing requirements, securing investment or competing with better-capitalised entrants.
The challenge, therefore, extends beyond creating a commercially viable industry. It concerns how regulatory choices shape participation, whether existing actors can transition into the legal economy and how the benefits of reform are distributed.
These questions brought together participants with different interests and responsibilities. Regulators must establish and administer a functioning framework. Commercial actors require predictable conditions for investment and production. Farmers and communities seek meaningful opportunities to participate, while civil society and advocates are concerned with exclusion, accountability and the wider consequences of reform.
Learning from other reform experiences
Comparative discussions drew on experiences from Morocco, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Colombia for perspectives on how different countries are navigating the transition from prohibition towards emerging legal cannabis markets.
The South African experience was particularly relevant to discussions about the historical foundations of punitive cannabis laws and contemporary efforts to address their legacies. This offered an interesting point of comparison for Ghana.
Legislators in Ghana have already played an important role in establishing the country’s legal framework. Their contribution, however, need not end with the passage of legislation. As implementation proceeds, parliamentarians have opportunities to examine regulatory readiness, institutional coordination, access to the emerging market and the wider public interest through their legislative, representative and oversight functions.
The comparative discussions reinforced the value of sustained parliamentary engagement after legal reform, particularly where implementation raises new questions that may not have been fully resolved during the legislative process.
Keeping public health in the conversation
Amid discussions about economic justice, regulation, market development, historical exclusion and political economy, UNITE emphasised the importance of keeping public health within the conversation.
Parliamentary scrutiny can help examine how health safeguards are incorporated into cannabis regulation, whether responsible institutions have the capacity to fulfil their mandates and how commercial objectives relate to wider public-health commitments.
A more inclusive market and an effective public-health framework have important points of intersection because both require attention to the institutions, resources and decisions through which reform is implemented.
The next stage of reform
The Accra workshop reinforced a central premise of UNITE’s Drug Policy Desk: legislation is an important stage of reform, but implementation determines much of what follows.
As Ghana’s cannabis framework moves from legislation into practice, sustained parliamentary attention can help ensure that implementation choices, their consequences and the experiences of affected communities remain subject to public scrutiny.
