Cannabis in Argentina

Argentina has no legal recreational market, but it runs one of Latin America's largest medical registries. About 240,000 people held a valid REPROCANN authorisation in November 2025, according to official sources quoted by Infobae, with roughly 100,000 more applications waiting. That registry, not a shop counter, is how most Argentines get legal cannabis.

The legal architecture has three layers. Law 27.350 (published April 2017) opened the door to research and medical use. Decree 883/2020 (published 12 November 2020) then created the pathway that made the registry real: a patient with a medical indication may grow, have a third party grow, or receive cannabis from an authorised non-profit. Law 27.669 (2022) added a framework for a licensed industry, overseen by the ARICCAME agency, and a separate ANMAT track approves plant-based medicines for pharmacies.

The pharmacy route is narrower than the registry. As of 2026 the products on pharmacy shelves are mostly CBD-dominant: Cannava's CBD10 oil from the Jujuy provincial company, and the ANMAT-registered Kanbis (Elea) and Convupidiol (Alef). None needs REPROCANN membership. Kanbis and Convupidiol were approved for severe childhood epilepsy and sell on a double or filed prescription, according to La Nación in 2022; CBD10 needs a medical prescription. Dried flower is not among the ANMAT-authorised pharmacy products we found.

The registry tightened sharply in 2025. Health ministry Resolution 1780/2025, published on 23 May 2025, limits prescribers to doctors listed in the federal professionals registry (REFEPS) who can show cannabis-specific training (art. 7). It sets a certificate of three years for individual growers and one year for non-profits (art. 10), and caps a home grower at 1 to 9 flowering plants (Annex II). Decree 27/2026, published on 26 January 2026, redrew the health ministry's organisation chart and gave SEDRONAR, the drug-policy secretariat inside it, the task of assisting the minister on medicinal-cannabis treatments and their registers. Press coverage reads that as REPROCANN moving to SEDRONAR; the decree text does not name REPROCANN.

There is also a governance knot at the top. Decree 462/2025 dissolved ARICCAME (signed 7 July, published 8 July 2025), but both chambers of Congress rejected it and Decree 627/2025 (published 3 September 2025) restored the earlier rules. The agency still operates under a government-appointed administrator (interventor). On 26 June 2026 it issued Resolution 41/2026, a special adaptation regime, open until 1 March 2027, for licences covering cannabis seeds, seedlings and cuttings for medicinal use; it is aimed at operators who already hold Health Ministry, INASE or SENASA authorisations.

Outside those channels the criminal law still applies. Law 23.737 article 14 punishes possession of narcotics with one to six years in prison, or one month to two years when the small quantity and circumstances show it is for personal use. In Arriola (25 August 2009) the Supreme Court held that punishing an adult for possessing a small amount for private use, without harm to third parties, is unconstitutional. That is a defence, not a licence: police can still seize, and selling is trafficking. Growing without authorisation can be prosecuted under article 5 (four to fifteen years), though the same article cuts the range to one month to two years when the small quantity sown or grown shows it was for personal use.

Prices and access are uneven. Patients without insurance can receive derivatives free through the public health system when they have a medical indication, and insurers and prepaid plans must provide cover, according to the ministry's REPROCANN page. The certificate itself can take months: a regional outlet, Sanjuan8, cited sector data of more than 80,000 applications waiting in February 2026. Buyers should treat online sellers of cannabis oil with suspicion. In July 2025 ANMAT prohibited several CBD oils sold as "food supplements" with disease claims (Dispositions 5034 and 5035/2025).

Verdex lists one seller for Argentina, the Jujuy state producer Cannava, because it is the one seller we could tie to a reported ANMAT authorisation (the disposition itself is not public in the sources we opened). Nobody publishes a register of REPROCANN growers' groups that we could use, and we do not list grey-market shops. Seeds are regulated separately: INASE says only establishments in its seed register may sell propagation material.