Ghana Standards Authority boss want legalising of marijuana considered

The Acting Executive Director of the Ghana Standards Authority, Professor Alex Dodoo has called for the legalization of marijuana in Ghana.

According to him, the economic potential of marijuana for the country was huge.

There has been increasing discussion in public circles on the tenets of legalization of marijuana in Ghana.

Unfortunately, most of the discussions in the public have all been based on moral justification and exaggeration of the effects of the marijuana plant with scientific evidence thrown out of the window.

His [Prof. Dodoo] call is believed to be borne out when he appeared before the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament to answer some infractions in the Audito-General's report.

According to him, in advanced countries like the United Kingdom, United States of America (USA) marijuana use is legal.

He said "In UK, for instance, one can purchase nicely and neatly packaged marijuana from stores for both medical and social use."

"Even though Ghana does not need the medical use of the drug, it will gain immensely from its exportation if it is legalised," he added.

He said "A full dose of medical marijuana, if you buy it in the pharmacy, bottled and packaged, will cost close to £ 600 which is a lot of money. So my considered opinion was that the discussion and the debate about if there is a market out there for a product that we have… I don’t think we have a medical need for the use of medical marijuana in Ghana. The conditions for which it is needed do not prevail here.

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"However, the export potential can be real and Ghanaians are Christians so we don’t talk about some of these things but from a medical perspective, it’s a medical product just like morphine which comes from opium. If the country can open the debate and say we have the potential to produce, it’s a natural resource, its organic, we have the potential to package it and to legally export it to raise income from countries where they need it and they are being forced to produce under artificial conditions, then I think it’s a debate worth having and I stand by that."