In 2021, the global legal cannabis market value was estimated at Sh1.5 trillion. The plant is said to have over 300 medical properties.
Jeans made from cannabis (hemp) fibre can last 30 years. Medical evidence supports the use of the drug cancer and Aids patients.
However, this just supports what has been known for thousands of years: Without abuse, cannabis could be a wonder drug.
That is what Prof George Wajackoyah, the Roots Party presidential candidate, is saying.
No wonder, at least 55 countries have decriminalised cannabis for medical or ‘recreational’ use. In 2020, after 59 years, the UN removed it from its list of the most restricted drugs, which includes heroin.
Let’s leave to medics and botanists the effect of cannabis on the mind and the difference between ganja, hashish, marijuana, hemp, bhang, Mary Jane and the good old weed. And their derivatives: Sour Diesel, Purple Kush, Blue Dream, Super Skunk and Afghani. Suffice it to say, marijuana is the female and bhang is the male part of the hemp plant.
Legal and medical researchers have increasingly questioned its ban. It emerged that it had nothing to do with effects on health. There was no scientific evidence against its use—like alcohol and tobacco. Its banning was based on industrial fears and racism.
First, cannabis posed substantial threat to the nascent but increasingly powerful industrial concerns—the chemical manufacturers, cotton industries, and newly invented synthetic fibre companies.
Chemical industries like DuPont were experimenting with new synthetic drugs and chemicals. There was also a newly invented recreation: Cigarettes, made from tobacco. Cannabis threatened businesses—the profitability of the newly invented synthetic fibre. Inventors of polystyrene (polyester) knew their business were doomed if cottage industries continued to churn out far more superior fabric from hemp. But there was no evidence against it.
Cannabis was smoked mainly by Mexican immigrant and low-class minorities alike African-Americans. So, a campaign of fear associating the drug with Mexicans, violence and crime was mooted. In 1937, Federal Bureaus of Narcotic head Harry J. Anslinger, became a leading advocate of cannabis prohibition. Blacks, too, were used in the propaganda.
‘Violence-causing drug’
Testifying before Congress in 1937, Anslinger said: “Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind. Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes.”
When the drug was finally banned in 1937, the US used its economic muscle to blackmail other countries to toe the line. Mexico refused. When the US stopped the export of painkillers to Mexico, leading to many deaths in hospitals., Mexico relented.
By the time most African countries got independence, cannabis had already been demonised under all types of legal tools.
In the past 20 years, legal scholars have shredded the basis of this prohibition, leading to its increasing acceptance of cannabis. And Prof Wajackoyah is right. BY DAILY NATION