Marijuana ‘Allah’s creation’, says Syed Rosli

Marijuana does not make people stupid or forgetful, says Umno Youth member Syed Rosli.

KUALA LUMPUR: God did not create marijuana to harm people, Umno Taman Chempaka branch information chief Syed Rosli Syed Harman Jamalullail has said in defence of the plant’s benefits.

He was responding to an open letter by Dr Nadiah Norudin, a medical officer and member of the Muslim health activism group I-Medik.

“This doctor is insincere and is not speaking truthfully. She’s a peddler of Western synthetic drugs,” he said in a Facebook post this morning.

Syed Rosli accused Nadiah of only getting her knowledge from academic journals written by people he said that “may only ruin the reputation of Allah’s creation, cannabis, to sell their synthetic medicines that only harm people in the long term.”

“So let’s keep cigarettes and alcohol as our alternatives,” he said sarcastically.

“She hasn’t criticised cigarettes and wine which are clearly dangerous, addictive, and haram under Islam.”

“The Netherlands is one of the freest countries with marijuana, and they have some of the world’s best architects. This doctor has never been to the Netherlands, nor has she stayed there,” he said.

He challenged her to go to the Netherlands and see for herself whether they had become “insane, stupid, or forgetful because they legalised marijuana.”

In the media yesterday, Syed Rosli was reported as saying that the Federal Government should consider allowing Malaysians the freedom to consume marijuana by amending existing legislature banning its cultivation, use, and sale.

“I’ve been raising this issue since last year,” Syed Rosli said in an Astro Awani report yesterday.

“Cigarettes and vape pose great health risks to the public, but marijuana on the other hand is proven to calm the nerves and can even lead to a reduction in the crime rate.”

Dr Nadiah however had criticised Syed Rosli for his advocacy of the decriminalisation of marijuana, saying that marijuana carried with it dangers to the public’s psychological and physical health.

She cited an article published by The New England Journal of Medicine in 2014, which she said showed that marijuana carried dangers of addiction and that almost half of daily marijuana users would be addicted, with one in six teens on marijuana, succumbing to addiction.