Thursday, May
16, 2019 / 08:38AM / By Olusegun Adeniyi,
Chairman, THISDAY Editorial Board / Additional Comments by Olufemi
Awoyemi / Header Image Credit: Proshare
| Agriculture |
Legalize
it
Don't criticize it
Legalize it, yeah yeah
And I will advertise it
Some call
it tamjee
Some call it the weed
Some call it marijuana
Some of them call it ganja
Never
mind, got to legalize it
It's good
for the flu
Good for asthma
Good for tuberculosis
Even numara thrombosis
Go to
legalize it
Don't criticize…
--Peter
Tosh, the late Jamaican reggae musician in his 1976 solo album after leaving
The Wailers
When in the
course of the 2019 presidential election campaigns, the publisher of
Saharareporters and candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Mr Omoyele
Sowore, said “we have to start taking care of our weed (Igbo), such that we can
also contribute to the GDP of the world,” many Nigerians derided him. I felt at
the time that Sowore had started a very important conversation we need to have
if we must tap into what is fast becoming a global money spinner in which our
country has a competitive advantage. In a Tweet from Thailand on Monday, Sowore
got an endorsement to his idea from Ondo Governor Rotimi Akeredolu who said he
was in the Southeast Asian country to “study how cannabis can be of more
advantage to the state and Nigeria at large just the way Thai government has
done”, adding, “Cannabis is used for medical purposes; how can it be cultivated
for specific purposes and not be abused?”
Akeredolu,
who was in Thailand with Muhammad Mustapha Abdallah, chairman of the National
Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), said his state would derive economic
benefits from tapping into the marijuana market: “We all know that Ondo State
is the hot bed of cannabis cultivation in Nigeria. We know how to grow it and
it thrives well in the sunshine state. With an estimated value of $145 billion
in 2025, we would be short-changing ourselves if we failed to tap into the
legal marijuana market. Our focus now is medical marijuana cultivation in
controlled plantations under the full supervision of the NDLEA. I strongly
implore the FG to take this seriously as it is a thriving industry that will
create thousands of jobs for our youth and spur economic diversification.”
Before I
make my point, let me state that I have never smoked cigarette or cannabis and
I am quite aware that in a country where hypocrisy is a national ideology and
majority are moral policemen (regardless of how they live their lives), the
idea of legalizing cannabis will be hard to sell. But in the world we now live
in, it makes perfect sense to tap into the economic benefit of an aspect of
marijuana use that has been in a global issue for a while and I commend
Akeredolu for his foresight. Besides, even in our country, as Peter Tosh sang
in his controversial album, “Doctors smoke it, Nurses smoke it, Judges smoke
it, Even lawyer, too”. But I am not advocating for anybody to ‘smoke it’.
Following
the passage of a law in Canada legalising the recreational use of marijuana
(which can now be grown, distributed, and sold anywhere in the country) last
year, the UK authorities also pledged to review the use of medicinal cannabis
which could lead to more prescriptions of drugs made from the plant although it
would remain banned for recreational use. The Israeli parliament has also
passed the medical cannabis exports law estimated to yield an annual $265m in
tax income alone. In the United States, many states have since 2011 legalised
its sale fuelling an industry that is now said to be worth $10 billion and
employs 250,000 people in the country. “You’ve never seen anything quite like
this,” says Jeffery Mascio, CEO of Cannabis One Holdings, a company that
develops and markets cannabis products in Colorado, Washington and Nevada.
“It’s a new industry that’s sprung up practically over-night.”
At the
instance of Mr Ehi Braimoh, I was in Port Harcourt last Thursday as keynote
speaker at the 2019 annual conference of the National Institute of Marketing of
Nigeria (NIMN). In the panel discussion that followed my presentation, Mr
Olufemi Awoyemi, the founder of Proshare who is never afraid to ‘shake tables’,
said it was time Nigeria tapped into the huge medical marijuana market. During
lunch, I had a chat with Awoyemi who said there is so much ignorance in our
country on what exactly marijuana is. “For me, it is an agricultural product
that can be put to many uses and offers many by-products which collectively
must be harnessed, regulated and exploited for the benefit of all”, said
Awoyemi who added that “It is a leaf that grows wild and naturally in at least
six states of Nigeria where scale and size offer a compelling case for an
agricultural economic zone.”
The level of
knowledge and awareness open to us today about marijuana, according to Awoyemi,
were not available when the laws were made to criminalise it in many countries.
But since then, research, information exchange and economic insights have shown
that marijuana or cannabis has a myriad of health and beauty benefits if
properly processed and applied, as we have also witnessed in Nigeria. “A common
example which everyone can relate to, is found in the many female hair products
in our shops and markets today, proudly advertising that they contain ‘Indian
hemp’ to add strength and body to women’s hair. No one can recall any religious
argument, stereotype or societal derision from such choices yet it represents
the clearest irony and shift in thinking that was lost on us all”, Awoyemi
said.
Our fears,
Awoyemi argues, need not interfere with our promise and I completely agree with
him. But if Nigeria is to benefit from the enormous medical and economic
advantages the agricultural product offers, he believes we need to enact new
legislations that cover the whole ecosystem: trademarks, patents, intellectual
property, weed planting, harvesting and shipping, tax laws, accounting
standards, customs & excise rates, tariffs, environmental impact assessments,
etc., and “we should do away with value destroying actions like burning
products and farms which is akin to printing money and burning it”, Awoyemi
said.
With
creative thinking, marijuana can earn for at least six states in the country
more money than they currently receive from the federation account, generate a
large number of direct and indirect jobs and create a competitive product value
chain that is sustainable and profitable. The farms can easily be ring-fenced
and confined to an export processing zone (EPZ) from which the product would be
grown, harvested, processed into contract-determined specifications and packed
for direct export abroad with supervision by officials of both the National
Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and NDLEA. For
that to happen, all the laws concerning cannabis use must be reviewed with the
intention of modifying them to allow for the proper leveraging of what has
become a key medical and economic resource.
Credits
The post Is
It Time To Legalise Marijuana first
appeared in Thisday on Thursday, 16 May 2019.
The
Argument for Marijuana
Olufemi AWOYEMI, May 09, 2019, PortHarcourt
There is a natural
tendency for human beings to engage in selective morality and establish
baselines for what is “right” and what is “wrong”, which are, of course,
ideologically biased concepts. The early adverse American attitude towards
Marijuana (or Cannabis) and the imposition of a ban on the ‘agricultural
product’ derived from the widespread use of the grass by black African slaves
in America, who must have found solace in the product to relieve sorrow and
reinvigorate themselves from the hard labour that was their perpetual grind and
fate.
In furtherance of the
stereotyping that went on then, the slaves realized that in a controlled
context, Marijuana provided them with a sense of wellness, hence it became an
identity or cultural ‘drug’ of choice.
The flip side of this
however was the narrow lane it offered for meaningful research into the
darker side, albeit, the hallucinogenic effect of the grinded leaf which was a
problem of abuse rather than value of usage.
This society approach
became elevated into mainstream thinking and invariably shaped the narrative
and stereotype that has persisted till late; and explains why right up till
modern times the larger number of people arrested for cannabis use globally
were mostly ‘folks of colour’, rather than ‘non-coloured’, who tend to tickle
their itches with synthetics and opioids such as cocaine and heroin and a
number of other coca plant by-products (irony).
The Case
for Medical Marijuana
To understand the
subject of Marijuana and the self-evident case for its useage, economic value
chain, and opportunity to better understand mental health and other issues, we
must first situate the context and construct.
First, at the very base
level must be the need to agree on what marijuana is and isn’t. For me, it is
an agricultural product that can be put to many uses and offers many
by-products which collectively must be harnessed, regulated and exploited for
the benefit of the sovereign.
It is indeed trite
knowledge that Cannabis is an agricultural product, a leaf that grows wild and
naturally in at least six states of Nigeria where scale and size offers a
compelling case for an agricultural economic zone.
Second, the legal
onslaught against the drug appears to be a perpetuation of the thinking that
created status quo in the first place – a product of ignorance, misinformation
and a fear of what was misunderstood.
Third, there exists a
two stage model of development that allows the development of an economic value
chain around the product that is novel to us in Nigeria asw ell as leverage
best practice thinking on business models around the cannabis business. At a
minimum, we can actually use this product to deliver on the nexus between
farmers, customs & excise, NAFDAC, dry ports and rail services.
Understanding
the Context
The context of the ban
on Marijuana or Cannabis, as it is sometimes called, relates to the
psychotropic impact of the abuse of the product on society. The level of
knowledge and awareness open to us today was not available then when the laws
were made (in response to a growing problem few had any better option of
addressing than to criminalize it. This has been a recurring pattern and
response to subjects where the society is unable to achieve a consensus on what
to do next.
Since then, and perhaps
specifically for us in Nigeria, research, information exchange and economic
insights have shown that Marijuana or Cannabis has a myriad of health and
beauty benefits if properly processed and applied.
A common example which
everyone can relate to, is found in the many female hair products in our shops
and markets today, proudly advertising that they contain “Indian Hemp” or
Cannabis to add strength and body to women’s hair. No one recalls religion,
stereotype or societal derision from such choices yet it represents the
clearest irony and shift in thinking that was lost on us all. On the one hand a
ban criminalises the raw product while another government agency approves as
“meeting standards” it use in another product.
The choice has been made
and the next concern must be how to approach the changes needed in our laws.
Yet, even without a major change; there are things that are happening and can
be done to go and grow beyond the thinking that created the incongruence
between the law and the reality.
Research has now shown
that Cannabis, if applied in the right doses and method, is known to be
effective in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among other
ailments and disorders. This is not new in the field of medicine where ‘medical
drugs’, now classified as hard drugs, were used in treatments under the
guidance of professionals. With greater research, and deeper understanding of
the properties of Cannabis there is now a global move towards allowing the use
of the product for mental health treatment with the smart and sleek nom
de guerre of “medical marijuana”.
The lack of
understanding of context has resulted in Nigeria’s drug laws being wrong-headed
in their approach to Cannabis broadly. Given recent findings in medical
knowledge of the usefulness of Marijuana and advancements in its processing for
both recreational and medical purposes, the adverse effects of the grass can be
eliminated or significantly reduced. The abuse of Cannabis in Nigeria was
just as bad as the abuse of old indigenous herbal remedies that have been
equally poorly researched. The “Orin ata” chewing stick was once seen as a
queer African voodoo remedy, but has since been proved by European scientists
to be a significant medical intervention for sickle cell anemia.
Understanding
the Construct
The issue of construct
relates to the spirit of the law that imposes a restraint on the use of the
product and the social stigmatization associated with Marijuana use. Both law
and social perception has since moved on since our legislations were crafted.
If Nigeria is to benefit
from the enormous medical and economic advantages the agricultural product
offers; we need to discard with the old laws and draft new ones that covers the
whole ecosystem from Trademarks, patents, intellectual property, data policy,
AI in weed planting, harvesting and shipping; land ownership, tax laws,
accounting standards, customs & excise rates, tariffs, rules and
co-location, port rules, local farmers rights, environmental impact
assessments, minimum qty for recreational use, sales and distribution rules,
border control provisions, community and social responsibility of businesses,
export limitation and active promotion of industries, investment incentives,
labour laws, health and safety standards, medical regulation and minimum standards
for NAFDAC and SON, mental health awareness and patients’ rights at a minimum.
We can do away with
value destroying actions like burning products and farms; it is akin to
printing money and burning it. Our fears need not interfere with our promise.
It is time to do the heavy lift.
Imagine
This
In a creative and
constructive world, Nigeria would change the laws of the use of Cannabis. It
would allow licensed and registered growers of the crop, process, pack and
export the final good to a variety of international markets. This would enable
at least six states of the federation generate an additional annual revenue of
about $800m each. The Marijuana farms would be ring-fenced and confined to an
export processing zone (EPZ) from which the product would be grown, harvested,
processed into contract-determined specifications and packed for direct export
abroad with supervision by NAFDAC and NDLEA officers.
This would generate a
large number of direct and indirect jobs and create a competitive product value
chain that is sustainable and profitable. The NDLEA laws concerning Cannabis
use must be reviewed with the intention of modifying it to allow for the proper
leveraging of a key economic resource. Rather than deny use of Cannabis, it
should be allowed but within the controlled context of products permissible by
dosage and formulation.
Cannabis has a less deleterious effect on health and if produced within appropriate specification and used in prescribed dosages can actually offer major health benefits.
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