IT seems we may be finally having that chat about dagga. President Jacob Zuma has told the National Assembly that Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has been instructed to investigate the possibility of legalising medical marijuana.
His announcement on Thursday was warmly applauded. It followed an earnest appeal to this effect the day before by the terminally-ill IFP MP Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, who has stage four lung cancer.
It's as bad as it gets; there is no stage five.
But Oriani-Ambrosini claimed that his use of THC - or TetraHydroCannabinol, dagga's psychoactive element - has extended his life expectancy "beyond what statistics say. I am now in the 0.01% survival rate. . ."
Speaking to the media about the Medical Innovation Bill, which he introduced to decriminalise medical marijuana, Oriani-Ambrosini revealed he had been treated in Europe at unregistered private, cash-only clinics and that, as he couldn't smoke, he'd been taking THC as a suppository. A pack of 30 tablets, he added, cost him R60 000.
This is patently absurd when you consider how cheap and how easy it is to get your hands on dagga in this country. The stuff really does, uh, grow on trees. Sort of.
And, if Dianne Kohler Barnard, the shadow police minister, is to be believed, you could probably walk into your nearest police station and just buy some.
Fact is, the SAPS have so much dagga they don't know what to do with it. Week in, week out they're confiscating bags of the herb by the bakkie-load or raiding vast tracts of rural South Africa under marijuana and ripping up whole plantations bush by bush. The evidence rooms at cop shops are filled to bursting. Who can blame them for dealing on the side?
But back to Oriani-Ambrosini's presser. Also present with the MP was advocate Robin Stransham-Ford who's been briefed to mount a constitutional challenge against the dagga laws, a matter that should be before the court some time next year.
Stransham-Ford, who also has terminal cancer, was representing the recently-formed Cancer Treatment Campaign, which is fighting for doctors to be able to "promote innovative and alternative treatments" for the disease and wants government to "liberalise" the medical and industrial use of cannabis.
Granted, this kind of language does remind me of that old pharmacist's joke: "What do you call alternative medicine that works? Medicine."
But so what? A terminally-ill patient with a bongful of Swazi? It beats aromatherapy and acupuncture every time.
Medical research, though, is ongoing, and it looks probable that the nay-sayers and doubters could be proven wrong about dagga. As it is, the use of cannabis to treat diseases or alleviate symptoms has become so "conventional" that medical marijuana is now legal in a growing number of countries, including Austria, Canada, Finland, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. In the US, an increasing number of states are following California and are also legalising medical marijuana.
But why stop at medical marijuana? Go the whole hog. Our lawmakers should follow Uruguay. In December last year, their House of Representatives and Senate passed a bill legalising and regulation the production and sale of the drug. That is, it is legal for all Uruguayans to possess, sell, transport and cultivate dagga for personal use. The law, which comes into effect in April, does not even specify quantity for "personal use", so go ahead, smoke the whole arm if you must. And, knowing some people, they probably would.
Oriani-Ambrosini was correct when he said the decriminalisation of medical marijuana could have an enormous impact on the economy. But think how greater that impact would be if decriminalisation included its more traditional uses as well.
As a recreational substance, dagga is way, way more popular than you'd imagine.
It is true there are those who would argue that the drug should remain a prohibited substance because decriminalisation would only result in many more South Africans becoming marijuana smokers. But this is rubbish. Last month, for example, I saw a photograph of the massive queue outside a Denver head shop shortly after the sale of marijuana became legal in Colorado. It reminded me of the pictures of the 1994 elections. But all these people weren't trying dope for the first time. They were seasoned heads.
It's the same here. The overwhelming majority of South Africans who'd be smoking a legal weed are those who do so already and who clearly are scornful of its prohibition. Hundreds of thousands of them lit up last night and got stoned. Hundreds of thousands will do so tonight.
They're just like us, these people. Maybe calmer, a bit giggly, have the munchies. But normal otherwise.
This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.
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