High time to change dagga laws

The author earning his stripes to preach on issues green.

MONDAY, July 31, is a red-letter date for the many, many medicinal cannabis users who I meet at my dagga talks in South Africa.

That is when deputy judge president Aubrey Ledwaba starts the 19-day “dagga trial” that sees two citizens, Jules Stobbs and Myrtle Clarke, sue seven government departments for basically lying about the health benefits of cannabis since 1926. Their aim is the same as that of the late IFP MP, Mario Ambrosini, whose death wish it was that the government decriminalises cannabis so that we can all grow this excellent medicine for home use, or to sell it on the open market, without fearing the poiza boot kicking down the door or helicopters indiscriminately spraying maize and cannabis crops with
toxic Roundup.

(Ambrosini, by the way, must be fuming at how IFP MP Narend Singh has quietly shelved this dream.)

The coming weeks will detail the health and socioeconomic benefits of legalising this vast informal crop and it would seem that at least one department, Health, has already lost its argument that dagga is a bad drug. This after its Medicines Control Council (MCC) quietly rescheduled cannabis from a schedule seven banned substance to a schedule six prescription drug. The MCC also gazetted an onerous mashup of regulations to allow a select few to grow dagga “to enable more research” on the plant.

House of Hemp is where its at

This is excellent news for Dr Thandi Kunene, whose government-subsidised House of Hemp has been growing and processing hectares of high-potency plants “for research” in one of the huge greenhouses at iDube Trade Port. (Now you now why its called iDube!)

When the government loses its case against legalising cannabis, the House of Hemp will be well-placed to supply state hospitals with quality controlled buds to make traditional Indian ganja tea, full extracts, infused oils, capsules, as well as the new cold-pressed juices and dab.

These cannabis products are all on sale in a huge but uncontrolled black market in South Africa right now.
(Update: House of Hemp has since sold a 60% share to Canadian registered company LGC Ltd. Pity the SA taxpayers who help funded the House of Hemp over the years won't benefit.)

Open markets the answer

Both the dagga couple, Stobbs and Clarke, as well as the Dagga Party’s Jeremy Action, argue that the only way the government can legalise this informal market “without fucking it up” is to facilitate auction floors like we have for tobacco or wool, and then require only a tax number for sellers. As with tobacco, the buyers would quickly set high standards while prices would follow supply and demand.

But an open market is not what Big Pharma wants. Instead, several shadowy figures are lobbying hard for a quality controlled market (read merciless profiteering).

The demand in KZN’s Midlands is currently as much recreational as it is medicinal, but experience shows that where cannabis is made legal, demand for what is claimed to be nature’s best pain killer and immune-system booster quickly outgrows sales to traditional stoners.

That endocannabinoid system

So exactly how good is cannabis for you?

The short answer, very. In layman’s terms, your body has myriad tiny keyholes in which your brain’s own Anandamide fits to act like a delete button for pain and inflammation at a cellular level. Anandamide is also called the bliss molecule, and it is now credited for causing the “runners’ high”.

Pharmacists call these keyholes receptors, and the theory is there are at least four types in the body that use cannabinoids to ensure homeostatis, or balanced chemistry in body and mind.

It turns out that THC, the most famous and most active of over 100 phyto-cannabinoids in the average Sativa plant, fits at least one of these keyholes even better and for longer periods than the body’s own Anandamide, while CBD, the next best known cannabinoid, neutralises the protein that removes Anandamide, ensuring a longer, natural “runners’ high” for the user. The bonus side effects are no pain or inflammation, and a super-boosted immune system.

A friendly warning to the cops

Cops doing this will soon face law suits.

Next month’s trial about the plant will see several international medical experts expand on how cannabis heals in other ways. Meanwhile, here’s a friendly two-word warning to our police station commanders: “class action”.

For this is what several lawyers are planning to bring next on behalf of all the citizens who are still arrested daily for possessing any part of the cannabis plant. It is no good pleading “just following orders”.

The Western Cape High Court put the writing on the wall for laws against cannabis, and evidence in the North Gauteng High Court will next week show these laws are based on lies concocted by racist British colonialists to prevent the Indians from becoming lazy and indolent, and the Zulus from becoming too strong.

Any cop shop commander who continues to rely on dagga busts to boost arrest statistics will soon be in contempt, and the arrested citizens will want revenge for every second behind bars.

(This opinion column.was first published in The Witness on 20 July 2017.)