Dagga growers boil over oil

Police continue to pounce on suppliers

THE heat is on against backyard cannabis oil manufacturers on the eve of the substance becoming a legal medicine.

Sheldon Cramer, who is dubbed “the Robin Hood of cannabis oil”, and is the founder of the Bobby Greenhash Foundation, believes companies that hope to cash in on the product are pushing authorities to help them get rid of potential competition.

“People have been licensed to grow it. We are trying to find out who they are but no one’s talking. We’ve got people asking the questions. We’ll find out,” Cramer said.

The foundation supplies the oil to those who need it, especially after they have exhausted their finances on conventional medicine.

It also offers legal help to people who find themselves on the wrong side of the law because of its use.

In November Parliament heard that the regulation process to allow the controlled cultivation and supply of standardised high quality medicinal cannabis products could be expected to be published next month.

In February 2014 Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, a lung cancer sufferer who used the oil, tabled his private member’s Medical Innovation Bill, which sought to make provision for innovation in medical treatment and to legalise the use of cannabinoids for medical purposes and beneficial commercial and industrial use.

The Department of Health referred queries about whether permission had been given to anyone to cultivate cannabis to the Department of Agriculture.

Spokesperson at the Department of Agriculture Bomikazi Molapo said the department did not know of any company or organisation that had been legally authorised to grow cannabis.

“Nor do we know of any legislation that authorises companies,” she said.

While there was speculation that big players were waiting to enter the medicinal cannabis trade, organised agriculture did not foresee a dramatic effect after the change in legislation.

However Johan Pienaar, an economist with KwaZuluNatal’s principal agricultural producer, AgriSA, said it was possible cannabis could become an attractive crop to complement fields allocated to growing cane when a sugar tax was introduced.

“Farmers will eventually have to bear the brunt of the sugar tax, and they may change to cannabis. Then it would change the production pattern.”

Hawks spokesperson Captain Simphiwe Mhlongo said he was not aware of the allegations of companies putting pressure on the police to target illegal cannabis oil producers.

But he stressed: “Dagga (cannabis) is considered an (illegal) drug in South Africa, thus the police will continue to arrest those who are using or dealing in it.”

He said the problem with backyard operations was that their product was not manufactured in a regulated way.

“What effect could it have on human beings? It must be scientifically proven that it can be consumed without side effects,” Mhlongo said.

“We will not have a problem with it when it is legal, but it must be manufactured in the correct way to meet the standards in terms of medication.”

Last weekend his staff pounced on a New Germany home, seizing 164.4kg of the plant from a garage workshop, and bottles of what police said was benzine but owner, Lawrence Kuhn, said was ethanol in bottles marked “Benzine”. Mhlongo said the police also seized magic mushrooms. Kuhn appeared in the Pinetown Magistrate’s Court on Monday and was granted bail of R5 000.

He said he would apply for a stay of prosecution.

“When I came into the court, Bobby Greenhash Foundation members were there,” Kuhn said.

Meanwhile, his supporters have taken to social media, punting the line “he’s a healer, not a dealer”.

Kuhn stressed the people he supplied with cannabis oil spanned a broad sector of society.

“Everybody has someone hurting, whether it’s a member of Parliament or someone below that,” he said.

He rattled off a list of the problems for which his clients sought his oil: “Brain cancer, pain relief, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) .”

Kuhn is a cancer survivor, having been treated with chemotherapy.

“If you have not experienced it, you can’t describe it,” he said.

“It took me a long time to find the right path (using cannabis oil) because I was still listening to the propaganda about it being bad.”

He also lost his father to cancer.

Kuhn said he sold cannabis oil in one millilitre doses at prices affordable to people who had often depleted their finances on conventional medicine.

We will not have a problem with it when it is legal but it must be manufactured in the correct way Hawks spokesman Captain Simphiwe Mhlongo