Cashing in on the cannabis ‘gold rush’ would require serious investment
THE argument that medicinal cannabis could be worth huge amounts of money to the Channel Islands is undeniably correct when you observe the new ‘gold rush’ occurring across the North American continent. However, it raises a number of pertinent questions.
Firstly, who exactly is going to grow hundreds of millions of pounds worth of medical-grade sensimilla? Decades of illegal growing in the US and Canada meant large numbers of experts were queuing up to apply for cultivation licences upon legalisation. Finding experienced growers in Guernsey is likely to be more difficult when you bear in mind that getting caught with numbers of illegal plants guarantees an arbitrary conviction for intent to supply resulting in jail time.
The other issue is that if you allow growing for export to the pharmaceutical industry, then you’re going to have to provide the citizenry with the option to use medicinal marijuana, as US citizens in 23 states currently are (its recreational use is legal in a further 10 states).
Perhaps the more pertinent question in the cannabis debate is why it was placed alongside heroin, cocaine and opium in Schedule IV of the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961, at a time when the very vast majority of people in Western societies had never even heard of the drug, let alone used it. To help discover the answer try reading Cannabis: A History, by Martin Booth. Racial subjugation anyone? Yes, really. White folks initially banned international trade in one of the most useful plants on earth, simply to oppress racial minorities in their respective countries. You couldn’t make it up...
GREG WHITEHEAD,
Castel.