For all the government’s recent flip-flopping on the sale, then not-sale, then sale-again of hemp-based products, you’d be forgiven for thinking that some strong skunk was being inhaled in the corridors of power.
The hemp that is grown for industrial purposes, such as fibres for making textiles, is breathtakingly short of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive part of the plant that makes people high. As a British hemp industry analyst pointed out to me once, you’d have to smoke a spliff the size of a telephone pole to get even a light buzz from industrial hemp.
The cannabis plant really is one of nature’s gifts. It has been used for centuries for making things such as paper, ropes and even sails for ships, giving us the word “canvas”. Its seeds are used in multiple health foods and the stems of the plant itself can be used to make bricks and, in one case, body panels for a car.
But because people generally have short attention spans, the message gets lost in the chatter.
When Harry J Anslinger, the original drug tsar in the US, took over as commissioner in the narcotics division of the Bureau of Prohibition in 1929, he tapped into the generalised cultural anxiety disorder that persists today, insisting, among other dubious claims, that dagga turned men into “wild beasts” and caused “dreams … of an erotic character”.
Anslinger started the War on Drugs, which, as it turns out, has done little to stem the flow of illegal narcotics but has instead made some people eye-wateringly rich and ensured a constant tsunami of money to enforcement agencies.
Health minister Aaron Motsoaledi is unlikely to be as vigorous as Anslinger was in his efforts to shut down the hemp business. If governments excel at one thing, however, it’s the solid application of the old saying that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
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