Experts and medics at SA’s first clinical cannabis convention
SHELDON Cramer doesn’t know why he is called the Robin Hood of cannabis oil.
“The media gave me that name,” quips the Richards Bay man. “But I have made it to the top of the organised crime list more than once.”
Cramer, who runs the Bobby Greenhash Foundation, produces thousands of bottles of medicinal cannabis oil every day, which are sent across the country to users – often free to those who can’t afford it.
But for more than five years, Cramer says his outfit has been operating in the “underbelly of society” in an illegal cannabis industry.
“We’ve been dealing with corrupt politicians, magistrates, prosecutors who are making money out of the system,” he claims.
Today, his foundation is part of the country’s first clinical cannabis convention in Johannesburg.
“Finally, we’re getting a lot of medical professionals together in one place… We’ve come to a point now where doctors accept the medicinal value, but don’t know what cannabis is about.”
His foundation is setting up a scientific research facility into cannabis to work with universities to conduct studies and document local strains to develop a uniquely African model “as an alternative to foreign corporates”.
As delegates attended the SA Drug Policy Week, a conference to inform the country’s new National Drug Master Plan by the Central Drug Authority, Cramer says he hopes officials “will see the light”.
“I’m hoping they will start to focus on harm reduction, instead of chucking junkies into jail and rehab. That hasn’t worked.”
Shaun Shelly, the founder of the SA Drug Policy Week, says it is critical that the master plan be robust, evidence-based and appropriate, with alternatives to the “costly and ineffective criminal justice response”.
“Increasingly, the criminal justice response to drugs is being challenged. People are struggling to come to terms with the apparent impact of drugs on the health and well-being of communities.
“On one hand, we’re hearing calls to decriminalise and even regulate (some) illicit drugs. At the same time we’re hearing how we need to increase the number of arrests for drug-related offences, clamp down on users and push low-level dealers out of communities.
“Yet other voices are saying people who use drugs need ‘treatment’ and we must build more rehabilitation centres. If our current responses have failed, what, if anything, has worked?
“If we hope to develop effective drug policy and improve the lives and health of our families, friends and communities, these are some of the questions we need to answer.”