Marijuana has over 2 million uses; legalize it – Blakk Rasta and A Pluz advocate

In a rather radical position on the most controversial debate on the use of cannabis, two of Ghana’s popular musicians have cast a slur on Ghana’s legal system.

Hitz FM’s Blakk Rasta and A Pluz are convinced that the criminalization of the use of cannabis popularly called weed is a symptom of a country that stopped thinking.

Blakk Rasta said on Joy FM’s Ghana Connect programme, marijuana is a “great blessing” to the country except that the nation has no brains to acknowledge its uses.

The comments come in the wake of the arrest and prosecution of hiplife rapper Kwaw Kese who faces possible imprisonment for smoking the narcotic substance.

Blakk Rasta who claimed he had never smoked marijuana before championed the legalisation of the use of the substance.

He said apart from the smoking of marijuana, the substance has over two million other uses which when explored would reinvigorate Ghana’s economy.

He argued little thinking went into the criminalisation of cannabis in Ghana.

“The laws that criminalizes marijuana are funny,” he said adding in the US the substance was criminalized because white women smoked it to put them in a mood to have sex with black men.

He does not understand the reason why it was banned in Ghana.

A Pluz on his part said there are much stronger substances that ought to have been banned and criminalised which have not.

He does not understand why akpeteshie and cigarette is out there on the market when marijuana, which grows naturally in the forest has been banned.

For cigarette, it is written right there on it “it causes cancer”. People know you will die young when you smoke it yet it is legal.

He was was quick to add though that presently the law makes it illegal and that must be respected.

DSP David Hukportie, head of the CID Drugs enforcement unit said the positions taken by A Pluz and Blakk Rasta are a bit myopic.

He said there are serious security issues and a negative social impact on any society that accepts the use of marijuana.

“Where there is insecurity, there is likely to be the abuse of drugs as well as arms,” he noted.

He said marijuana is widely grown and widely abused in the country and there is the need to clamp down on it.

Lawyer Samson Lardy Anyenini said the law on narcotics is clear.

“If you import, possess, cultivate, distribute without lawful authority,” you get convicted for ten years.

“For people who are caught sniffing, injecting, smoking, without lawful authority you get not less than five years,” he explained.