Ghana has the opportunity to embark on another journey of   ‘industrialisation’ with cannabis ‘wee’ following its decriminalisation, former Executive Secretary of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB), now Narcotics Control Commission, Mr Yaw Akrasi Sarpong, has proposed.

“Wee has great potentials for Ghana’s pharmaceutical industry. The seeds are used to make hemp creams used by women and it   will help the economy, so the state should think about it,” he added.

Mr Sarpong made the suggestion when he spoke on the theme ‘Thinking outside the box, cannabis governance,-The international and national perspectives’ at day’s workshop organised by Perfector of Sentiments (POS) Foundation for law enforcement officers and prosecutors at Takoradi recently.

He said “Cannabis, (wee), can be used for industrial and medicinal purposes, it can be processed in bouquet machines. “Ghana Beyond Aid”, that’s what it means, Nkrumah spoke about neo- colonialism, we must grow the cannabis locally and give people right to use it.”

According to him, Americans funded the war chest during the Second World War with cannabis trade, producing their own papers, ropes and tents from the ‘wee’ plant, but Europeans rather banned Akpeteshie and cunningly promoted their whisky in Africa in the 1940s.

He told the participants that, the police and the military could establish agricultural branches to grow in commercial quantity to produce their own uniforms, but posed this question: “why do we use our scarce foreign exchange to import it?”

Mr. Akrasi Sarpong said, “America’s war effort was funded by industrial people using cannabis to make ropes, cables and building hempcrete and tents. People use the seeds to make cream. So, there are industrial purposes, people use it for medicinal purposes, and we can get medicines out of cannabis. Cannabis is older than the American state.”

 Thailand, he said, had legislated recently that people could grow cannabis   in their homes, while in South Africa, it is a recreational drug because they had decriminalised the drug (cannabis)

 “We need to think outside the box. America used it for over 80 years for a good purpose but we are saying it’s a crime.

 “The state of California, the sixth biggest economy, earns over $3 billion a year from cannabis. In Ghana, oh! its evil, it will be good   we grow it here. Police should think about it, of course, it’s dangerous for children.” he stressed.

From Clement Adzei Boye, Takoradi