I get money through selling dagga – local grower

MBABANE- A local man, who grows cannabis (dagga) is wondering why other countries, where the plant is legal, are assisting Swaziland to eradicate it.

The man, who will not be named, says the fact that the United States aids the Swazi police force in their eradication of local crops is ludicrous.

"Why is it that they can come here and destroy peoples’ livelihoods when you can buy marijuana from a vending machine in California?" he asked.

"In fact, in the US State of California, the legalisation of possession and the sale of marijuana have qualified for the November ballot. If accepted, this law will make it legal to posses 28.5 grams of marijuana and to grow limited amounts of it for personal use. In Canada, the British Columbia Marijuana party’s platform calls for the law on marijuana prohibition to be repealed, and in Amsterdam, it is legal to purchase marijuana from a coffee shop," he explained.

"People in Swaziland do not realise how much money can be made," said the grower, who acknowledged that high quality dagga could be sold for over E2000 a kilogramme.

"Europe and the US grow it, why not here? I do not really care if they legalise it because my money comes in regardless, but what are they afraid of?" he wondered.

"It is illegal to grow dagga in Swaziland, yet a lot of people are doing it," said Sigwe Member of Parliament, Sivumelwano Nxumalo.

"Some people have talked about legalising it, but it has never been seriously taken up. I think we need to have a real discussion on its benefits and side effects."

According to another government official, who did not want to be identified, the legalisation of dagga should be seriously considered, as its taxation could provide an alternative source of revenue for the government.

"Right now, government revenue is seriously declining," he said. "And we all know that marijuana is being grown here, so why not tax it to create an alternative source of revenue? It was discussed at a meeting last year, though it was initially laughed at. It just won’t happen under the current leadership."

According to Superintendent Albert N. Mkhatshwa, international liaison in charge of drugs, there is no possibility of dagga being legalised in the near future. "It is not possible, especially since we are fighting this crime with other African countries where it is illegal," he said. "I do not think it should be debated, it would really complicate our jobs, as dagga leads people to commit many crimes."

Swaziland’s dagga is world renowned for its quality, yet the possibility of its legalisation has yet to be explored in the Kingdom.

Known locally as ‘dagga’, marijuana is a widely grown cash crop in Swaziland. Its product is consumed locally and exported to countries such as South Africa as well as Europe, which makes the Kingdom one of the largest marijuana-growing areas in the Southern African region. This year, the Royal Swaziland Police eradicated between 80 and 165 hectares of dagga per month.

"But we can benefit from these natural seeds," says an individual who has grown dagga for years, who refuses to be named due to the nature of his business. "Governments around the world allow the growing of marijuana, yet Swaziland continues to destroy the crops of rural people who are only trying to send their children to school."

- Times of Swaziland

The promise of legalisation

Anti-drug policies in the U.S. have failed, and the marijuana trade is largely in the hands of organized crime. It's time for a saner policy of legalisation and regulation.

People on both sides of the marijuana legalisation debate have strong feelings about Proposition 19, the California ballot initiative that promises to regulate, control and tax cannabis. But science and empirical research have been given short shrift in the discussion. That's unfortunate, because the U.S. government has actually funded excellent research on the subject, and it suggests that several widely held assumptions about cannabis legalisation actually may be inaccurate. When the total body of knowledge is considered, it's hard to conclude that we should stick with the current system.

One important question is whether laws criminalizing marijuana have effectively reduced supply and use. It would appear from available data that they have not. Despite billions spent on anti-cannabis law enforcement and a 30% increase in the number of arrests in California since 2005, marijuana remains the most frequently used illegal drug. Nationally, an estimated $10 billion is spent each year enforcing marijuana laws, yet an ongoing study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse has concluded that over the last 30 years, the drug has remained "almost universally available to American 12th-graders," with 80% to 90% saying the drug is "very easy" or "fairly easy" to obtain.

On the health side of the equation, scientific consensus is that while cannabis may pose some health risks, they are less serious than those posed by alcohol and tobacco. The approach taken to regulating these other harmful substances, however, hasn't been to criminalize them but to regulate their distribution, to impose taxes on their purchase and to educate the public about their risks. These measures have been shown to be effective, as in the case of cigarette consumption, which has dropped dramatically.

On the other hand, cannabis prohibition has not achieved its stated objectives. As detailed in a report published last week by my organization, the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy, research funded by the U.S. government clearly demonstrates that even as federal funding for anti-drug efforts has increased by more than an inflation-adjusted 600% over the last several decades, marijuana's potency has increased by 145% since 1990, and its price has declined 58%.

In this context, supporting Proposition 19 seems like a reasonable position, and recent polls have suggested that almost half of decided voters support the ballot initiative. However, there has emerged a strong assumption in the debate that, though legalisation will save police time and raise tax revenue, this will come at the cost of increasing rates of cannabis use.

This notion is based on a widely cited Rand Corp. report, which used a theoretical model to conclude that rates of cannabis use will increase if cannabis is legalized. Though the authors of this report cautioned readers that there were "many limitations to our estimate's precision and completeness" and that "uncertainties are so large that altering just a few key assumptions or parameter values can dramatically change the results," few seem to have read past the headline that legalisation is likely to increase cannabis use.

This may be the case, but it's not a certainty. In the Netherlands, where marijuana has been sold in licensed "coffee shops" since the 1970s, about 20% of the adult population has used the drug at some time in their lives. In the United States, where it is largely illegal, 42% of the adult population has used marijuana.

Neither Rand's theoretical model nor other commentaries have considered the potential benefits of the broad range of regulatory tools that could be utilized if the marijuana market were legal. The state could then license vendors, impose purchasing and sales restrictions and require warning labels. Although these methods have been scientifically proven effective in reducing tobacco and alcohol use internationally, it is noteworthy that successful government lobbying by the tobacco and alcohol industries has slowly eroded many of these regulatory mechanisms in the United States.

A bill has been introduced in the California Legislature to create a uniform statewide regulatory system under the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control if Proposition 19 passes. Such a system would allow, finally, for an evidence-based discussion of how to optimize cannabis regulatory regimes so that the benefits of regulation (including such things as tax revenue and reduced drug market violence) can be maximized while rates of cannabis use and related harms can be minimized.

Up to now, the fact that cannabis is illegal has meant that the unregulated market has been largely controlled by organized-crime groups, and the trade has sparked considerable violence, both in the United States and in Mexico. Given the widespread availability and use of cannabis despite aggressive criminal justice measures, there is no doubt that a saner system can be created if marijuana is strictly regulated rather than left in the hands of organized crime.

Evan Wood, a physician and professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia, is the founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy.

- LAtimes

Cannabis should be sold in shops alongside beer and cigarettes, doctors' journal says

An editorial in the British Medical Journal suggested that the sale of cannabis should be licensed like cigarettes because banning it had not worked. Photo: PA

An editorial in the British Medical Journal suggested that the sale of cannabis should be licensed like alcohol because banning it had not worked.

Banning cannabis had increased drug-related violence because enforcement made “the illicit market a richer prize for criminal groups to fight over”.

An 18-fold increase in the anti-drugs budget in the US to $18billion between 1981 and 2002 had failed to stem the market for the drug.

In fact cannabis related drugs arrests in the US increased from 350,000 in 1990 to more than 800,000 a year by 2006, with seizures quintupling to 1.1million kilogrammes.

The editorial, written by Professor Robin Room of Melbourne University, said: “In some places, state controlled instruments - such as licensing regimes, inspectors, and sales outlets run by the Government - are still in place for alcohol and these could be extended to cover cannabis.”

Prof Room suggested that state-run off licences from Canada and some Nordic countries could provide “workable and well controlled retail outlets for cannabis”.

Prof Room suggested the current ban on cannabis could come to alcohol prohibition, which was adopted by 11 countries between 1914 and 1920.

Eventually it was replaced with “restrictive regulatory regimes, which restrained alcohol consumption and problems related to alcohol until these constraints were eroded by the neo-liberal free market ideologies of recent decades”.

The editorial concluded: “The challenge for researchers and policy analysts now is to flesh out the details of effective regulatory regimes, as was done at the brink of repeal of US alcohol prohibition.”

Campaigners criticised the editorial. Mary Brett, a retired biology teacher, said: “The whole truth about the damaging effects of cannabis, especially to our children with their still-developing brains, has never been properly publicised.

“The message received by children were it to be legalised would be, ‘It can't be too bad or the Government wouldn't have done this’.

“I know - I taught biology to teenage boys for 30 years. So usage will inevitably go up - it always does when laws are relaxed.

“Why add to the misery caused by our existing two legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco?”

Earlier this year, Fiona Godlee, an editor of the Journal, which is run by the British Medical Association, endorsed an article by Steve Rolles, head of research at Transform, the drugs foundation, which called for an end to the war on drugs and its replacement by a legal system of regulation.

Dr Godlee said: “Rolles calls on us to envisage an alternative to the hopelessly failed war on drugs. He says, and I agree, that we must regulate drug use, not criminalise it.”

- Telegraph