PNC chairman champions 'wee' legalization

Chairman of the Peoples National Convention (PNC) Bernard Mornah says he is 100 percent behind the legalisation of marijuana in the country.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in an article in February urged countries to legalize marijuana as a way to combat the menace of drug abuse and illegal trafficking. He argued, “Drugs are dangerous, but current narcotics policies are an even bigger threat because punishment is given a greater priority than health and human rights.”

In Ghana, persons who trade or abuse the substance are made to face the full rigor of the law. Just yesterday, Wednesday April 20, a man was arrested by the police in the Northern Region for possessing dried leaves suspected to be marijuana, locally referred to as ‘wee’.

Sharing his thought on the issue on 3FM’s Sunrise Morning Show hosted by Winston Amoah Thursday, Mr. Mornah, a prospective law maker, described the issue as an economic war.

“It’s an economic war that has been waged on us as Africans for so many years and it’s time for us to overcome this.

“Alcohol has been legalized but not all of us take alcohol and so many other things have been legalized and not all of us take it.

“A product that has so much value, medicinal, economic and what have you is being criminalized and in the secret, most people are doing it.

“I think it’s important for us to broaden the debate so that our security agencies must appreciate that the historical reasons for which wee or Indian hemp has come to be seen as something that we should not deal with has everything to do with economic empowerment and not because it has so many dangers on human beings.

“When you go to Bolivia, the President Evo Morales has stamped the world and gone ahead to legalise the production of cocaine in the country and it’s generating a lot of wealth and its ensuring that the people are active and continue to be in business so as Ghanaians and Africans, I think that we should take a look at it”.

Mr. Mornah also compared the benefits of legalizing wee with the side effects of cigarettes which is even imported into the country.

“You know that the side effects of cigarettes are more devastating than wee, yet we allow the exportation and importation of cigarettes and we cannot come to terms with wee which a lot of us know has a lot of medicinal purposes such as surgeries, gynecological problems, cosmetics and what have you.

“So if you enhance the production you will see that you will enhance cosmetic production in your country and there will be chain of industries that will flow out of it with people earning income and we will increase our GDP as a country.

“I am saying that let's find the good uses of it and use it for those purposes and I’m calling for the economic value for which we must legalise it and not just the inhaling of it”.