- Stakeholders React
BY AWELE OGBOGU
Cannabis, indian hemp, weed or simply pronounced as igbo (origin of the word not known), goes by many aliases, yet has few friends who can profess their love for it for fear of the consequences. However, strong conversations have emerged in recent times about the medical and economic benefits, although moralists say that legalizing cannabis consumption is not a choice.
Investigations revealed that the agitation for the legalisation of Cannabis Sativa may not succeed in Nigeria because the “proliferation of illicit drugs often leads to crime, chaos and conflict”.
Incidentally, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NEDLEA) has a boss who is as tough as many of the drug barons. He is in the person of Brig. General Mohammed Bubba Marwa (rtd). Marwa once said that “the proliferation of illicit drugs often engenders a pattern of crime, chaos and conflict. In the advanced world, it is the driver of the high crime rate and violent killings in the inner cities. In developing or third world countries, it is the escalator of strife, pogroms and civil war and has played a big role in countries torn to pieces by tribal war, such as it is playing out in Syria, which has become the hotbed of Captagon and Afghanistan, which controls the opium trade. “We have seen narco-terrorism in countries like Colombia and Mexico where drug cartels are a law unto themselves and are as powerful, if not more powerful, than the state. So, there are real cases of where and how illicit substances played a role in a society’s rapid descent into chaos and teetering on the brink of a failed state.
“So the pertinent question for us today is: Have drugs played any role in the festering insecurity in Nigeria? The answer is yes. Of this, we have ample evidence.” He said, “Of all the known illicit substances, Cannabis Sativa is the only one that is native to Nigeria and it is the most abused of all illicit drugs and from the findings of the National Drug Survey, cannabis is becoming a national albatross.”
While warning that the population of Nigerians hooked on cannabis alone was more than the population of countries like Portugal, Greece or the Republic of Benin, he said that as such Nigeria could not afford to toy with the grim reality of the danger of legalizing cannabis when all the needed infrastructure to monitor and control it are still far from being in place.
“Where cannabis is concerned, we should not by any argument allow ourselves to become the proverbial fool that rushed in where angels fear to tread. Countries like Canada, which are pro-cannabis have strong and efficient institutions that are way ahead of ours by long mileages.
“Given the reality of our law enforcement, controlled cultivation of cannabis is a mirage. Aren’t pharmaceutical opioids controlled? Tramadol, codeine, Rohypnol, Benzopam, are all controlled, yet, their trafficking and abuse is causing us unquantifiable human and economic loss.
“And for those who point at the inherent economic benefit that could accrue from the legalisation of its cultivation, following our reality, would you be comfortable, if by tomorrow, your 13-year-old son can easily access marijuana, or you find some wraps of weed in his pocket, or you learnt that someone has introduced your 16-year-old daughter to smoking cannabis under the pretext that it has medicinal value?
“Our individual answer to that question will give us a public opinion of where we should stand as a country in the cannabis debate,” he said.
Hence, a public relations practitioner and brand strategist, Mr. Ikem Okuhu said it will take quite a lot for people to alter their opinion about cannabis no matter how compellingly the contrary argument. “Our prejudices are too strong and yielding ground will not come that easily. But there was a report I read, a research material from a firm known as New Frontier Data stating that Nigerians spend a dizzying $15 billion annually on marijuana. This translates to N5.4 trillion in local currency. This is about four times more than the budget of Nigeria’s richest state, Lagos, whose budget was N1.168 trillion and more than 25 times bigger than the budget of Enugu State, which stood at approximately N170 billion.”
He recalled how late governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State found himself making a desperate pitch for the legalization of the banned crop. Ondo State is reputed to be the largest producer of cannabis in Nigeria and “one can imagine what this could add to the economy of this state whose budgets, relatively speaking, dangles around some hundreds of billions.
“Many us ‘sanctimonious’ Nigerians doubled down on late governor Akereolu on this. I actually wondered how a state governor would push for the legalization of a plant with such harmful effect on its consumers. But “Aketi”, as the governor was more popularly called, was seeing the numbers.”
“Speaking of prejudices, I detest Indian Hemp and that was chiefly because it nearly destroyed me as a much younger person. In 1996, while I was writing my final year examinations at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, I had taken the substance, along with a few friends a few minutes before entering the exam hall. Not that I was a heavy user of the substance before then. But it just happened that these friends had it with them and I joined, like I had, a few times in the past, to smoke.
“What happened to me inside the exam hall was like the stuff miracles are made of. I just knew that I was writing and tearing my answer scripts, apparently convinced in my hallucinating mind that I was not writing the “right” things. I remember I had torn the third script when the invigilator screamed, “30 minutes more!” with such a thunderously loud finality that told me I either get things done or I was in for an extra year just for a few sniff of a borrowed wrap of burning leaves. Thousands of multi-coloured images of failure flashed through my mind in that instant that I found myself dripping in my own sweat. I became normal in an instant and once my fourth answer script was handed to me, I wrote as briskly as fast as my shaking hands could allow. I was lucky the invigilator strangely understood my predicament because he allowed me some extra 10 minutes or so; enough for me to answer the three compulsory questions required.
He said “that was the very last time I tasted marijuana. It also made me despise everything about the plant. I have a few friends who still take it and I do my best to tolerate them, always keeping them at arm’s length.
“Although recent literature has been replete with strong messages in favour of the legalisation of cannabis and thus, the democratization of its consumption, I have been reluctant to even read any of those materials. My close shave with repeating my final year, no thanks to my one-off indulgence in 1996, was still haunting me. But the headline I encountered above changed everything and actually encouraged me to read a lot more.
The black-market worth of cannabis worldwide is estimated at over $60 billion. He said “this is such a dizzying number and if you factor in the fact that Nigerians (documents claim more than 20 million Nigerians smoke cannabis) puff away $15 billion annually, it should bring you closer to what the opportunity would be if this crop becomes major agricultural business of Nigerian farmers, especially in those parts of the country like Ondo State where it flourishes quite well.
“I know moralists would come down hard on my perspective on this issue but there has not been any conflict between real economics (as against greed and lustful acquisition) and morality that the tide didn’t swing in favour of the former. In the words of Indian jurist, economist, politician and social reformer, Babasaheb Ambedkar, “where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them.”
“I am convinced that the vested interests that have made legal cannabis difficult or even impossible will, in the coming years, experience increasingly weakening resistance against the economic force legal cannabis will unleash and the earlier Nigeria takes position to profit from what in many places, has been called the “green gold”, the better.
But that is entirely his own views, for many respondents reasoned that those who prohibited the use of cannabis and other hard drugs had their genuine intentions. They do not believe that “morality” should cave in for the so-called gains of cannabis, whether economically or medically, with some saying its part of the signs of the End Time. One terrified respondent asked “Is it because the country is hard that they are now talking of cannabis as a source of revenue?”
Yet, the brand strategist said in his submission that “what I think we should be taking about in Nigeria is how to harness the economic and medical potentials of this crop to improve our economic situation. Looking back, I am even beginning to think that the biggest challenge cannabis has in a country like Nigeria is not so much about the hallucinatory effects it has on those who consume (smoke) it as it is about the stigma society brings to bear on those who indulge in the habit. With billions of naira being made in that industry, I expect pipelines of opportunities to be created by Nigeria. Government can incubate controlled production, harvest and exportation of the plant in such a way as to minimize its spread among the people. We read in newspapers about confiscation of truck-loads of cannabis by the National Drug law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA); there are also regular burning of whole farms by the same agency, all in a bid to minimize consumption. In fact, cannabis is classified as a narcotic drug in Nigeria. But rather than slow down consumption, what we have seen is steady adoption of the habit, such that now we have variants very popular among the youths, such as cloud, Colorado, among others as the cliches goes.
This article is not, by any means, pushing for legalization of cannabis. On the contrary, the respondent said “I am trying to evaluate the relationship between economic (including medical) marijuana with the recreational aspect and it is clear the economic side far outweighs the recreational side.
It is my belief that once government begins to play a role in the propagation f economic marijuana, recreational marijuana would reduce, especially because it would make more sense for farmers to sell their produce in bulk and make more money than pay the huge prices they currently pay smuggling their ways around the country with all the ‘impunity’ that goes with it.
Investigations showed that support for cannabis decriminalization and legalization is highest among users, but there is little research on constructions of cannabis decriminalization in the narratives of users who are also dealers. There were no studies found on discursive constructions of cannabis consumption and decriminalization in dealers’/users’ accounts of the drug’s harms. But a qualitative study was undertaken in which in-depth interviews were conducted with 31 commercially oriented Nigerian men drug dealers who also use drugs. The researchers said they were recruited through snowball sampling, while data analysis was based on a social constructionist approach to grounded theory, which emphasizes the role of language and discourse in the construction of reality. The technical report concluded that “while harms from cannabis use were recognized, these were constructed as being relative to consumption practices and user’s ability to manage drug effects. Accounts used different discourses and rhetorical strategies to deconstruct popular views of cannabis as a dangerous drug, including minimizing harms by juxtaposing them with harms from more potent drugs as well as with benefits from use. Harms were, however, amplified in relation to decriminalization to delegitimize the policy approach due to concerns about potential increase in consumption and harms to inexperienced consumers.
“Constructions of cannabis-related harms in the participants’ accounts served discursively to delegitimize cannabis decriminalization, without stigmatizing its use and the users. There exists the need to raise awareness on cannabis decriminalization and legalization as part of measures to bolster support for policy reforms among stakeholder groups, notably the consumers.
While research into the efficacy of medicinal cannabis sounded promising, it is still in its early stages, according to ‘Trusted Source’, a research group. “Further research is required to fully assess the role of medicinal cannabis in treating mental health conditions. What are the health risks of cannabis? While medicinal cannabis may aid in the treatment of several health conditions, it is not without its risks. Cannabis use is likely to increase the risk of short-term psychosis and long-term mental health conditions, such as schizophrenia.
Some evidence also suggests that people who regularly use cannabis are more likely to experience suicidal thoughts and there is a small increased risk of depression among cannabis users, contrary to views that it brings joy and relief. Cannabis use may also exacerbate existing symptoms of bipolar disorder among people living with it.
Smoking cannabis, which is the only consumptive method known to many, such that they are cannabis users who like to say, albeit ignorantly, that it is better to “smoke igbo than cigarettes, cannabis smoking can cause scars in the respiratory system, damage blood vessels in the lungs and lead to bronchitis.
The researchers suggested that “there is evidence that demonstrates both the harm and health benefits of cannabis. Yet despite increasing studies in the area, more research is needed to determine the public health implications of legalization for economic reasons.”
