Asia Pacfic Report
Prime Minister Charlot Salwai, who was elected as prime minister for the second time in October last year after his predecessor was voted out in a no-confidence vote, was in New Zealand for an official visit this week.
He stopped at Puro’s state-of-the-art cannabis cultivation facility in Kēkerengū on Tuesday, as part of his itinerary.
It has taken a while to kick Vanuatu’s 2018 medicinal cannabis legislation into motion, but Salwai is optimistic to get things moving for the economy.
New Zealand has a well-established medical cannabis industry with 40 companies in business since it was legalised in 2020.
Salwai said marijuana grew “easily” across Vanuatu.
‘Grows everywhere’
“[It] grows everywhere in the villages, but we don’t want to grow the wrong one, because it’s against the legislations.”
He said he found the visit to the cannabis farm “interesting”.
“They know about the benefits of this particular kind of marijuana,” he said.
“We need to invite the people who know about it, and the purpose of growing this marijuana is what is interesting to see.
“We invite them to come to Vanuatu and do a small-scale test to see and compare the quality of what we are producing here in Vanuatu, because here [New Zealand] it is seasonal while in Vanuatu it grows the whole year.
“It is good to compare the quality.”
He said Vanuatu is interested in granting medicinal cannabis production licences to those who know “the purpose of growing”.
