Kwami Sefa Kayi is Host of Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo'
Host of Peace FM’s Morning Show, Kwami Sefa Kayi has questioned why Ghana continues to hold on to outmoded laws that ban the use and possession of marijuana.
The renowned Journalist believes that it’s out of order for the country to hold on to such laws when other countries are raking millions of dollars in revenue from its trade and usage.
Kwami Sefa Kayi noted that marijuana has so many uses but since the people of Ghana only look at the use for recreational purposes hence they cannot see its economic value.
“Why are we focusing everything on the smoking of the herb and we’ve zeroed in on that and so from when before independence, we were burning marijuana farms, marijuana farms because it is on our statutory books. If those who used to arrest people for transporting, importing or exporting marijuana, today, are trading among themselves, today, have found medicinal value for marijuana, why are we still sitting here arresting people for possessing (marijuana).
So he has one roll of marijuana; something small and we will jail him for 10 years and yet, it is a multi-billion dollar business out there. Why are we refusing to think outside the box?” he questioned in an interview on JoyNews TV.
The Kokrokoo host believes that it’s about time conversation around the economic potential of marijuana is started else Ghana will lose out whiles other countries are cashing in on the potentials of the drug.
“I’m not propagating the open recreational or social smoking of marijuana. I am asking questions of researchers, scientists, people who should know better, what is it that makes marijuana such a big business out there?
How come that recreational marijuana, medicinal marijuana, is big business between the US and Canada, between Australia and the US and we still sit here and we are still arresting people and burning farms? Are we not thinking? Are we waiting for a period when they will come and finally tell us ‘oh, it is okay? By then, they would have been like 200 years ahead of us. So we should look at the economic benefits. That is why I meant by a matured conversation about marijuana”.
The Narcotic Commission Bill passed in 2019 legalized the growth of a strain of cannabis for medicinal purposes with strict regulations. The intake and sale of marijuana or cannabis remain illegal in Ghana.
But recreational marijuana and for that matter the smoking and possessing of cannabis without authorization remains illegal and law enforcers seem committed to arresting and prosecuting abusers of cannabis than even perpetrators of heinous crimes.
