I Could Back These Greenies

[Puffin13]

I Could Back These Greenies

South Africa - Ever since I started writing about this nation's meat-eating habits, I have been excoriated by some irate vegetarians who have suggested I tell the nation to find green alternatives to what they call the barbarism of slaughtering animals for human consumption.

So, my search for green alternatives began in earnest.

Because I hate things such as celery sticks, broccoli, asparagus, Brussels sprouts (that yucky, tasteless cabbage-equivalent to a human midget), I had to think of more exciting greens.

Until - boom! - the answer hit me: marijuana. No, seriously, before you call the cops on me, marijuana, or dagga as we prefer to call it in South Africa, is fast becoming a gentrified green alternative food or form of medication.

When the late Peter Tosh started campaigning for the legalisation of marijuana in his country, Jamaica, many establishment types dismissed his strident cry - contained in his album Legalize It - as the wail of a crazed addict trying to use music to justify his addiction.

In the song he not only points out that marijuana is a choice herb for judges, lawyers, doctors and other respectable personages, he lists a number of ailments that the holy herb, as he calls it, is said to ameliorate: asthma, tuberculosis and others.

Speaking of respectable personages experimenting with the weed, Bill Clinton once admitted to having smoked dagga in his youth - but was dumb enough not to inhale. The reigning president of the US has also admitted to having smoked dagga as a youngster - and, as he told the media: "I inhaled frequently, that was the point." Streetwise president.

Anyway, with the passage of time, Tosh has been vindicated. Mainstream medicine is grudgingly and publicly declaring the herb's medicinal benefits - and actively doing something about it.

For the record, according to the online magazine The Daily Maverick, the use of dagga for medicinal purposes is as old as human civilisation itself.

The Chinese list dagga as one of 50 crucial herbs in medicine. Today, medical marijuana is legal in countries such as Canada, Austria, Israel, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy and some parts of the US, the magazine reported.

It's just that dagga has over the years been stigmatised as a drug for irresponsible layabouts. It's been blamed for causing mental problems for some people - what K Sello Duiker called "dagga-induced psychosis" in his novel The Quiet Violence of Dreams.

It's rather ironic that in Jamaica, which to the minds of many should be the dagga capital of the world thanks to the hypnotic reggae grooves that are associated with the herb, dagga is still a banned substance.

It's instructive to note that under the George W Bush administration, The Daily Maverick said, raids by federal authorities on medical establishments that dispensed dagga were rife. Further, unlawful possession was strictly prosecuted in accordance with the Controlled Substances Act.

The Obama administration has reversed that. The US Justice Department is on record as having said that it would "no longer instruct federal agents to go after medical dagga clinics - provided they were operating lawfully", the Maverick reported. A number of states have fully operational, legal clinics that dispense dagga as a medical alternative.

Even academia is reaching out to the dagga industry. In Oakland, California, they have Oaksterdam University, a trade school for the cannabis industry. According to The Daily Maverick: "the school, which has been educating students on marijuana law and cultivation since 2007, also operates a medical marijuana dispensary, a book store and a glass-blowing facility."

Just a few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story about Med Grow Cannabis College. This college, based in Southfield, Michigan, teaches students the history, horticulture and legal aspects of growing marijuana for medical and culinary purposes.

In Michigan, as in California, it is legal to grow dagga for medical purposes. In fact, in Los Angeles, according to the New York Times, there are hundreds of dispensaries that rely on the various medical dagga programmes for their supplies.

It is perhaps time authorities in this country destigmatised dagga. Perhaps it's time they considered branching into medicinal dagga. It's no secret that there are hundreds of dagga farms in South Africa. How about tapping into these farms, formalising some of them and in the process creating legitimate employment while developing a sound medical alternative? Informally, I know that inyangas encourage their patients to boil dagga and drink the hot infusion to deal with ailments such as asthma. Maybe organised medicine should be looking at this seriously. This could, possibly, curb the abuse of dagga as it will then be a prized medicinal plant which should be protected.

And, ah, yes, I knew you would want to know who would teach the students at the various dagga colleges. Fortunately, the field of dagga does not require much book learning. The emphasis is on experiential learning, as the Michigan experience has taught. The only required text at that college is Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Growers' Bible, by Jorge Cervantes. The six-week primer course at this college costs $485. After finishing the course, students can apply for certification with the authorities and duly start their own dagga cultivation businesses or dispensaries.

Thankfully, in this country experienced users and peddlers are a dime a dozen. For a start, we could recall Ras Dumisane from France, where he tends to babble away after a few spliffs of bad weed, and re-skill him into becoming one of the instructors at the pilot dagga college. You can't go wrong. Dumisane, for those who slept through an eventful 2009, was that Rasta guy who mangled our national anthem before a rugby Test against France in November. The Boks lost.

Besides, there are also culinary possibilities in this dagga story.

In the Michigan experience, Todd Alton, a botanist, recently talked students through a list of dagga recipes, which included cannabutter (butter containing dagga, as the name suggests), chocolate canna-ganache and greenies (the cannabis alternative to brownies). Ah, yummy. I wonder how those greenies taste.

Perhaps after all the meat consumption I've been doing over the past few weeks, I need to go green as we enter the new year. Anybody for some greenies glazed with cannabutter?

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