Ghana legalises cannabis for health and industrial purposes

Ghana has finally legalized marijuana for health and industrial purposes.

According to CitiNewsRoom, Parliament passed the Narcotics Control Commission Bill, 2019 on Friday evening.

The law also makes the country’s Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) a Commission with enhanced powers to oversee the industrial use of some narcotic substances.

The Commission, however, will still have the mandate to control and eliminate the trafficking of prohibited narcotic drugs to ensure public safety.

The new law also empowers the Minister for Interior to grant licences for the cultivation of cannabis of not more than 0.3 percent THC, the main psychoactive compound in cannabis that gives the users a high sensation, for industrial and medicinal purposes.

Punishment for the cannabis-related offences has also been stiffened, according to a source on the Defence and Interior Committee of Parliament.

Before this law was passed, Ghana’s Narcotic Drugs (Control, Enforcement and Sanction) Act, 1990, PNDC Law 236, criminalised narcotic drugs such as cannabis and states that anyone found in possession or importing a narcotic substance “shall on conviction be liable to imprisonment for a term of not less than 10 years.”

The manufacture, produce or distribution of such narcotics also faced similar sanctions.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around 147 million people, or 2.5 percent of the world population, consume cannabis.

On the African continent, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Lesotho, and South Africa are among counties that have decriminalised medicinal cannabis use.