A minor legal change within the UN that would remove some barriers for medical cannabis use has caused deep divisions in Africa, reports Daily Maverick.
There is a split is between those who want to embrace science and develop a legal medical industry (South Africa and Morocco), and those who have been the proponents of prohibition that refuse to recognise any beneficial uses, like Egypt and Nigeria.
The April session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs was the first convening since the vote, in December 2020, on cannabis removal out of the control schedule listing substances with no therapeutic value. Between the adoption of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961 and the vote on medical cannabis use in 2020, the African group has rarely experienced such a public split in multilateral drug policy forums.
The report notes that international drug control is technically an extremely complex policy area, and a politically highly emotional debate. In this context, says the DM, the 11 African countries that voted last December had to find a finely balanced position – on one hand to allow for beneficial medical use of cannabis and to adopt a novel position in drug control, and on the other to absolutely not signal that cannabis is normalised or trivialised, and that its recreational use is still harshly fought.
Production can be traced in all parts of Africa. Some countries are moving towards medical legalisation (such as SA and Rwanda) and others to alternatives to punishment for recreational consumers (Ghana and Senegal). And Africa also faces unknown illicit drug challenges, mainly due to its strategic position in the new trafficking routes.
Full Daily Maverick report (Open access)