Morocco's not-so-underground marijuana economy

by Colin


Morocco is the world’s biggest exporter of cannabis, each year producing over 1,000 metric tonnes of hashish, or half the world’s annual consumption, at a value of over 4.5 billion Euros. Kalâa, in the northern Rif, is the heart of Morocco’s pot farming region.

Curious about the local hash industry, I climbed up to the village to check out the plantations.

From its perch at the top of the Kalâa Valley, Atef’s hut looks out over miles and miles of marijuana fields. From talking to farmers like Atef and dealers in town, I’ve pieced together a rough idea of the workings of hash production in the Rif.

The crop is planted in March and harvested in August, by which time the plants can grow to be two meters tall. Once the plants are cut, the farmers dry them and either sell them straight to middlemen or store them indoors and make hash as necessary to meet demand throughout the year. The actual hash is made by sifting the cuttings through a fine mesh, heating the resulting resin, and packing it into bricks.

One full-grown plant yields about 600 grams of resin, and a single family farm can produce about a hundred kilograms in a year. After the bricks are made, they’re either sold within Morocco or to traffickers who smuggle the hash into the EU, generally through Spain. Small-time dealers and pot tourists also do their share of smuggling, sometimes swallowing up to a kilogram in small lumps wrapped tightly with cellophane, which they later pick out of their feces to smoke or sell at home.

Cannabis is illegal in Morocco, and possession is punishable with ten years’ imprisonment, but dealers and farmers operate more or less in the open...since marijuana farming provides the livelihoods of 760,000 Moroccan peasants and hash is unofficially the country’s most lucrative export.

The growers know that a crackdown would be a terrible financial decision for the government, so they’ve taken liberties: their “outlawed” crops are brazenly planted in plain view all over the hills.

...while it’s rare to spot marijuana growing right by a main road, strong whiffs of the plants are common when driving on the region’s highways.

full article...Beyond Digital

GM marijuana a growing problem in Colombia

by Luis Robayo

Greenhouses lined with genetically modified marijuana sit on a mountainside just an hour ride from Cali, Colombia, where farmers say the enhanced plants are more powerful and profitable.

One greenhouse owner said she can sell the modified marijuana for 100,000 pesos ($54) per kilo (2.2 pounds), which is nearly 10 times more than the price she can get for ordinary marijuana.

Local authorities said the arrival of genetically modified seeds, which are imported from Europe and the United States have allowed "a bigger production and better quality at the same time".

Another seed modified in The Netherlands is fetching a good price in the area, said a foreign researcher, who asked to remain anonymous. That version, well-known in Europe as "La Cominera," is named for the Colombian village where it grows.

"La Cominera's" higher value is due to its increased concentration of THC, the plant's principal active ingredient, and the modified plant verges on an 18 percent concentration level, compared to a normal marijuana plant's two to seven percent, said the researcher.

Despite the fact that marijuana production is illegal in Colombia, farmers say they continue to sell both traditional and modified marijuana because of economic advantages. One resident who spoke on the condition of anonymity said he can sell 11 kilograms of marijuana for 160,000 Colombian pesos ($87).

In the greenhouses outside of Cali, in a secret location accessible only by foot, it is easy to recognize the famous plant with star-shaped leaves, where it grows amid other legal crops.

"I don't like growing marijuana, but it ended up that way," one farmer said. "I received a loan to grow coffee, but I was drowning and I had to sell my harvest very cheap. My sister told me it would be better to plant marijuana."

Marijuana was first introduced to the country in the 1930s and residents of Cali said that for economic reasons, they have never stopped cultivating the plant since.

They added they cannot sustain themselves on coffee and banana crops alone, because prices fluctuate widely and it is difficult to reach markets in time to sell the perishable items before they spoil, due to a poor road network.

The hemp plant was originally legally used in the production of textiles and soccer balls until 1962, when authorities banned the use of marijauana in those products in order to comply with international standards.

According to botanist Luis Miguel Alvarez, a teacher at the University of Caldas in Manizales and the author of several marijuana studies, after marijuana is grown and dried, it can endure long periods without spoiling, which is a strong economic advantage.

Police commander Rodriguez said the crop's growth poses a problem for local law enforcement, because profits are often used to finance other criminal activity.

"We believe that the sixth front of the FARC guerrilla forces are 90 percent financed by marijuana," he said. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia is Latin America's largest and longest-fighting insurgency with 47 years of armed struggle and 8,000 fighters.

Marijuana production and sales are growing in Colombia, which was also the world's biggest producer of cocaine in 2009, according to available statistics, he said.

"This year we have already seized 27 tons (of marijuana by June), compared to 23 tons last year. It is troubling that the resources of armed groups are growing and because of this they can acquire arms and explosives," Rodriguez said.

Nationwide, authorities say they have seized 41.8 tons of marijuana to date in 2011, compared to a total of 228 tons in 2010.

AFP

Could legalized marijuana cultivation save California's economy?

by Ed Vulliamy

'When I see that, it's like looking at a shed full of cows. I see a whole lot of work," says Jim Hill, opening the little gate into his humid greenhouse in which a forest of marijuana grows, and from which a pungent, heady scent exudes at gale force. Not work as in hard labour, emphasises Hill – though there is a bit of that – but expertise growing some of the most potent weed on the planet.

Nearby there are vineyards and horses graze the sun-stroked farmland, but this verdant hillside near the town of Potter Valley in northern California lies in an area called the Emerald Triangle: three counties bordered by mountains to the east and the Pacific to the west that connect the lyrical terrain north of San Francisco with the wilderness of the Oregon state line. This breathtakingly beautiful corner of earth is the marijuana capital of the western hemisphere thanks to three conspiring factors: its perfect climate; the pervading culture; and topography – this is a maze of mountain dirt roads, locked access gates, isolated villages, secluded slopes and wooded glades, far from prying eyes.

Jim Hill, however, is a respectable figure – neither old stoner nor criminal – and he is not afraid to show off his working practices. "You're just going to have to smell of weed for the rest of the week," he jokes as we clamber through his greenhouse. "Squeeze this," he enthuses, "take a sniff, feel the nice, rich oily texture…"

Ninety-eight per cent of growers would not think this sight possible in late April, he says, indicating the succulent, ripe buds oozing heavy on the branch. "You're looking at icebergs in July." Hill has worked out what to plant when: he talks about daylight hours at this latitude, "plant efficiency" and above all cross-pollination. And no wonder: his other business and passion is as a breeder of greyhounds. He shows me a video of one of his dogs streaking from penultimate place in a big race in Phoenix to win.

"Now, we develop and cross-breed different strands of marijuana," he beams. He talks about indica and sativa plants, about kush and his own speciality, scarecrow. "Just look at those purple leaves," he says. "You should see the messages of gratitude I get from my patients for this."

Not every law enforcement officer here in Mendocino County would agree – for the law here is labyrinthine – but Hill is operating legally. In 1996, following the comfortable success of a referendum on what was called Proposition 215, California passed its Compassionate Use Act, which allows patients with a doctor's "recommendation" (it is not a prescription) to cultivate and possess marijuana for personal use.

The act was subsequently expanded to help create a network of collectivised dispensaries. At first a handful appeared, now there are thousands, some small and dingy, others de luxe. In the city of Oakland, there is an entire neighbourhood called "Oaksterdam", which boasts a college for the study of cannabis growing as well as a range of dispensaries (one, called Blue Sky, offers arguably the world's biggest selection of different strains).

Jim Hill started growing marijuana because of its medicinal properties – his wife, Trelanie, suffered from a serotonin imbalance and he believed it could help her. Now his crop is destined for dispensaries in San Diego and Los Angeles. "It was the attitude of the government, hassling me, that turned me into an advocate."

Even here, cannabis cannot be grown for profit or sold, so what keeps Hill's greenhouse legal is that the marijuana itself is owned "not by me but the collective" – the First Choice Collective, it is called. Its 1,200 members will have been "recommended" marijuana by a doctor. To be legal, subsequent transactions take place within a closed loop. "All I sell," says Hill, "are my services." According to the law, the collective and its members "remunerate" Hill – he is not paid commercially. But he makes a tidy living.

If only the same could be said of the Californian economy. It may be the eighth largest in the world, but the state government has issued IOUs and unemployment is at its highest for 70 years. In his final budget in January, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed what he called "draconian" spending cuts aimed at fixing a $19.9bn (£13bn) budget deficit. He has said previously he would welcome a public debate on proposals to legalise and tax marijuana to help plug that hole.

Tax revenues from medical marijuana (amounting to roughly $200m) barely scratch the surface of what might be raised, given that marijuana is now by far the largest cash crop in what used to be known as the Orange State. It is this that has made an unlikely bedfellow of the actor who played the Terminator and those who might feel themselves closer in spirit to Dennis Hopper's character in Easy Rider.

In November – now that a referendum "initiative" has attracted sufficient signatures – there will be a state ballot on whether California should fully legalise marijuana. This will bring an industry worth an estimated $10bn in Mendocino County alone into the mainstream economy. "The state of California is in a very, very precipitous economic plight," Democratic state assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who introduced the legislation, said recently. "It's in the toilet… With any revenue ideas, people say you have to think outside the box, you have to be creative."

It is in this context that someone who embodies the spirit of Californian entrepreneurship can hope to prosper. Jim Hill is rightly proud of his expertise – "No one else is growing this stuff to the level we are here. I'm tellin' ya, we're good at this" – and growers in Mendocino County talk about the eventual "appellation" of marijuana (a system akin to that used in France and elsewhere to identify the best wines). Benign he might be, but Hill can see the potential. "What California does, the world tries to follow 20 years later," he says. "That's just the way it is. The seeds of alternative culture and digital technology were here and now it's marijuana."

But Hill represents only one side of this story. In the counties of Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity, different forces are involved, some that represent another strain of California's founding optimism, and others much darker.

There is no mystery as to how northern California has become the Napa Valley of marijuana while other products "made in the USA" wither on the vines of deindustrialisation and recession. During the 60s, San Francisco was famously the capital of an experimental drug culture, when cannabis and LSD were ingredients in an earnest imaginative adventure. At the time of the Summer of Love in 1967, marijuana arrived largely from Asia, with some produced locally by motorcycle gangs, including the Hells Angels, in what is now the Emerald Triangle.

In the years that followed, as the dream turned sour around Haight-Ashbury, an exodus began of hippies and disillusioned Vietnam vets. They moved north to settle what became known as "the Lost Coast". From the mid-70s onwards, these communities became established – I remember touring them – with their vintage Volkswagen buses, coloured banners and totem poles on the land. And of course, in this climatically benign and secluded wilderness, they planted what they needed and liked to smoke.

But for a second time, they were pursued. Seekers of the new dawn were soon joined by farmers with an eye for business, by motorbike gangs affiliated to criminal distribution channels in the big cities and, latterly, by Mexican narco-cartels. Now they face new arrivals: agribusiness, big pharmaceutical companies and possibly tobacco giants. (The RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company, which makes Camel cigarettes, dismisses as "rumours and speculation" reports that it is about to buy up tranches of land.)

People of the counterculture – there are still many here, growing a little marijuana legally and perhaps practising herbal medicine professionally – as well as savvy growers like Jim Hill, now find themselves cultivating their crops alongside farmers who would never touch the stuff themselves. Criminal syndicates that grow their crops in buried freight containers, for example, and others who hire armed guards to oversee their "trimming" operations.

Tensions take root: between legal and illegal growers; between those who grow their cannabis naturally and outdoors and those who mass-cultivate under lights; between those who grow organically, with an emphasis on quality, and those who use fertilisers or cause diesel spillage from their hydroponic hothouses, with an emphasis on quantity. Plus, of course, between big interests at opposite ends of the spectrum: vicious cartels and syndicates making best use of an illegal market while it lasts, and the big tobacco and pharma companies salivating at the thought of legalisation.

Local and state authorities are sorely tempted to see some of the marijuana money through regulation and taxation. But for the same reason, opponents of cannabis are extremely wary, and California's marijuana laws are endlessly being jostled over and amended at county level, and can even be contradicted outright at federal level, so that the spirit and letter of law combine into a kaleidoscope of plant limits and rules on transportation and remuneration.

Jim Hill is forever getting caught between the layers of the law. Mendocino County passed a "Measure G" allowing growers to cultivate up to 25 plants per parcel of land, but that was cut back by a "Measure B". Hill grows substantially more than 25, insisting that "county law can't pre-empt state law – which sets no limit". Meanwhile, agents from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) arrived at Hill's farm one morning last October to enforce national law. "They were very nice guys. They said 'we've come to cut down all your plants,'" recalls Hill. The federal charges were dismissed – making fewer headlines in the local press than when they were levelled.

Hill is no hippy – he wears a smart yellow golf shirt – but he is a supporter of legalisation who takes a surprising line on the role of the cartels and criminal gangs up in mountains. To his mind, cannabis is a battleground on which you cannot always choose your allies. "It's like paedophile priests in the Catholic church," he says. "I don't accept it when the church says, 'oh, they're not good Christians', because the church knows it's going to have to count their votes against the atheists one day. And that's how it is for us with the Mexican cartels. The cartels are breaking the system, and it's a system that's got to be broken."

Marvin Levin of the Mendocino Farmers Collective, which grows high-quality organic marijuana, takes a different position, wanting "nothing to do with people whose interests and ties are in selling this stuff for profit, and not growing it right, whether they're the men with guns in the woods, or pharmaceutical companies or big tobacco. We're nothing to do with people growing for Goldman Sachs with 100 grow lights, or the mafia."

The politics and economy of the Emerald Triangle come inevitably to be dominated by its most famous, ubiquitous and potentially lucrative product. When you wake up in the county seat of Ukiah ("haiku" spelt backwards, as locals point out), the scent of marijuana hangs heavy on the dewy mist that rolls off the mountains. Among the morning newspapers is the latest edition of West Coast Leaf, "the cannabis newspaper of record", with pictures of men in suits poring over plants and pages of adverts for marijuana-specialist lawyers, "medical cannabis valuations", "the pre-rolled MediCone cannabis delivery system", and Organicann, "the best medibles [marijuana edibles] on the planet. Whether it's savoury pot pies, robust infused tea or delectable cookies."

Mendocino is the county for which Dan Hamburg is campaigning to be supervisor – a role akin to county council chairman – with a fair chance of success. His wife, Carrie, joins our discussion. It was her experience of cancer, which pot "made just about bearable", that persuaded Hamburg to position himself behind the cause of medical marijuana.

Hamburg lives on a hillside, past solar panels that power his wooden house, with a thumbed encyclopedia on a lectern in the hallway. He was, from 1992 to 1994, congressman for northern California on Capitol Hill. In the past, his political enemies have endeavoured to use his Californian good looks and intelligent, easy manner against him – as well as his history of campaigning for the decriminalisation of marijuana – but it rarely worked.

"People ask me, 'Are you the growers' candidate?'" he says. "I reply, 'It depends which growers.' I'd like to think I was a candidate for small, legal, medical growers, but not a big indoor growers' candidate. I think marijuana should be grown organically and in the sun, not under grow-lights." An environmental consultant by profession, he says, "I'm against the noise and diesel spills that indoor growing involves. I'm extremely wary of big tobacco taking over the growing of marijuana because the quality would go down. We've heard of tobacco companies preparing to buy land near here, and I sure am not their candidate."

Among Hamburg's opponents, he says, are interests not involved in marijuana growing. "Their problem? That the marijuana crop is so successful, it's driving up wages. People can't pay their labourers the minimum pay, when the pot trimmers are earning upwards of $20 an hour."

Hamburg intends to drive a wedge "between legalisation and decriminalisation. I favour the latter. No, I don't think schoolchildren should smoke it. What we are aiming for is people to be able to grow marijuana, take it to a place where it can be tested for quality, and for the consumer and the grower to benefit."

This is a position that finds sympathy with another important member of the local community. Bert Mosier arrived to become president of the Greater Ukiah Chamber of Commerce from Kansas, where he had been an economic development officer at county level. We meet in America's first organic brewpub. "This is a county where the economy was built on lumber, which went into decline, to be replaced by fishing, which has also declined," he explains. "In that situation, marijuana is the big dead fish in the middle of the room – everyone talks about it, but people are afraid to get out of the comfort zone. It's impossible to calculate how much it's worth, or the exact impact of an underground economy. But I've heard estimates of $10.6bn." He emphasises the importance of the marijuana economy to the local economy as a whole. "Businesses have told me that the marijuana crop is the difference between staying open and going bankrupt – no, not just the smoke shops and tie-dye: these are restaurants and stores.

"All I'm saying is that I want this county to succeed and I'll join the conversation, and remain in the middle," he continues. "Though of course, those opposed to pot say that to join the conversation in the middle is not neutral at all, but an endorsement."

Marijuana country, and marijuana culture, are not lands of milk and honey. For some they may be paradise, but there is a price to pay for paradise. One day, that price may be the arrival of executives from Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds and British American Tobacco; from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Roche. But for now, the price is paid in crime – big crime, and the petty crime it causes. Each morning around 7am, a group of itinerants with matted hair, in ragged clothes, clutching their belongings, gathers outside Walmart in Ukiah. One particular group has come from St Louis, Missouri, to wait for trucks that arrive and take them up to work as trimmers on the bigger marijuana farms. In the evening, they hang around encamped by the river, littering the banks and smoking their payment in kind.

They don't like to talk much about where they are going and have been: a boy called Skip does say that they sometimes work on farms "in the forest" under armed guard. These are "a ways up, in the mountains," he says, along winding dirt roads in thick woodland and deep valleys over which Drug Enforcement Administration helicopters fly, and into which patrols sometimes venture to make arrests. These are marijuana farms that do not entertain reporters, the kinds of growers who keep their distance from Dan Hamburg and Bert Mosier, and vice versa.

According to California's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, organised crime has moved into the marijuana business in the north of the state in different guises. The most recent arrivals are gangs affiliated to the Mexican Sinaloa and Arellano-Felix cartels, who send illegal migrant workers into remote and unguarded slopes and canyons on public parkland to cultivate marijuana. On almost "every raid" into such places, "we find weapons", says the bureau's spokeswoman, Michelle Gregory. Since California's economic crisis has forced cuts in the park service, covert planting has become easier off hiking trials through the state's 31 million acres of public wilderness. Much of the cartels' activity, says a law enforcement source, involves hijacking other people's marijuana, or armed invasion of the homes of growers who are then reluctant to call in the police.

Other criminal syndicates are hangovers from the original dope-growers in the region, the Hells Angels, who – having serviced the Bay Area in the 60s – never went away. But they did change, and adapt; they streamlined, says a DEA source, developing their cultivation methods "to grow dope that's strong but growable in bulk" and establishing criminal distribution networks throughout urban gangland.

Tom Allman is sheriff of Mendocino County, and has served 28 years in law enforcement. We meet at his office at 7am, between appointments, and he tells a funny story about a British military guest he hosted at an event held by the National Rifle Association ("If it wasn't for the British, we'd never have needed a Second Amendment!"). Allman also draws a line between who is growing what in Mendocino County. "The problem," he says, "is not old hippies. Marijuana has always been part of life around here, and they're harmless. But we've also got the Mexicans, the Russians and Bulgarians – with guns. They're organised, plus people from Italy, England, Germany get in on this. They come, stay a year, and move to a different county. Where there are drugs, there is crime. That's the problem."

He recalls how "one time we busted a guy – you know those freight containers that trucks pull around? Well, this guy had eight of 'em buried underground and arranged like this around an underground water supply." Allman draws a pattern like the petals of flower. "He had 8,000 plants. This kind of thing is happening all over – big hydroponic operations in a county of only 90,000 people… In 2009, we destroyed 541,000 plants, which means there are about 5 million illegal plants we do not get, using 4 to 5 million gallons of water a day," he adds. "Try telling that to the environmentalists."

Allman is also concerned about the "tourism" that might follow legalisation in November. "If that thing passes, it'll be like America got tilted to one side and every degenerate in the country not bolted down is going to drift here." He makes the point that marijuana in Mendocino County can sell for as little as $1,500 a pound. "In Georgia, it's $4,200 a pound. Think about it."

The previous morning, at my motel, a wild couple were loading up their car which had Tennessee plates, the scent hanging heavy over the parking lot. The man's ranting was for all to hear. "Yeah, there was blood all over the floor, but I got some shit from out of my head!" These presumably are the sort of tourists of whom Allman is wary.

For someone like Allman, the situation as it stands at the moment, with the law constantly subject to revision, can be frustrating. "I have officers who are leaving the police, saying they just can't be cops any more, having to walk out of houses leaving all those plants," he says. "Even I get a little tired of being sued and having people come in here with court orders and I have to give them back their marijuana. I've never yet had to give back to anyone in a wheelchair, but I've often had to give plants back to some kid of college age."

He goes to his computer and pulls up the website potdoc.com, noting its ethos with disdain. "You go to a doctor who asks if you have $200 in your pocket and from then on, you're self-medicating, for whatever ailment you say you got."

Later on the same day, Sheriff Allman joins 200 others from the county, most of them marijuana growers, who pack themselves into the venue of Ukiah's Saturday Afternoon Club from lunchtime until way past dark. These growers have set aside their shovels – even on the first sunny Saturday in months, badly needed to prepare for the growing season – to drive for hours from places with names like Spyrock and Whale Gulch. Cannabis workers, medical marijuana patients and "cannabusiness" owners mingle, too, with government officials, political candidates and representatives of business.

This novel event is organised by the Mendocino Medical Marijuana Advisory Board and the Cannabis Law Institute, and has been convened to discuss what happens if California votes to legalise marijuana. And here they are in one place: these Vietnam-era pioneers of pot returned from the war, who headed for the hills to create the finest cannabis strains in the world and who today face a new enemy in the crosshairs of agribusiness, big pharma, big tobacco and the possibility of marijuana monoculture following legalisation.

At one table, beefy guys with buzz-cuts and folded arms exude the wariness of life under the radar: in hushed tones, ex-loggers-turned-ganja-farmers talk about shakedowns and sawn-off padlocks. One asks those at his table to respond to a question from a workshop survey: "What assets do we bring to this industry?" "Seizable ones," responds another man, his voice rife with sarcasm. There is laughter, but no one smiles. "This county is third in the nation for seized assets," says a third man.

"I have relatives who buy cannabis in LA," says another, "but the strains are depleted. It looks and smells like the real thing, but it's so bad the dispensaries are issuing refunds!"

"If I shared my seeds with you," someone challenges, "how do I know you're not gonna sell out to Monsanto?"

Two people in the audience have especially interesting things to say. The first is Dan Rush, special operations director for UFCW5, the north California branch of America's third largest trade union, United Food and Commercial Workers. "Schools are closing. Police officers are being laid off. If government opposes legalisation, they've lost their minds," says Rush. He claims that his union represents 1,200 cannabis workers in the Bay area.

Sheriff Allman chats informally to people he knows. He then appears, speaking to camera, in a film shown to the meeting, in which he insists: "I'm not saying that marijuana is this innocent little herb that doesn't affect people, but it doesn't have the serious impact on society that other serious problems do. I'm spending 30 per cent of my time on marijuana. There's other things I need to be doing." The audience, which has found itself watching Allman watching himself on screen, breaks into unabashed applause. "We'll hold him to his views," whispers one man, adding that he already respects the sheriff for once extracting a woman from a burning car with his bare hands.

Eight long hours later, Dan Rush from the union helps fold away the chairs and a man with a mop of silver-grey hair loads a last item into his truck – a painting of the earth with the slogan: "Respect the land for future generations. Organic outdoor." Then he climbs aboard and drives back up Highway 101 – to a place he runs called Area 101.

The road north from Ukiah cuts through a breathtaking landscape of mountain meadows coloured luminous green by heavy rain this year. In the town of Willits ("Gateway to the Redwoods"), Roxie's Rock Shop advertises a tool called a Mendo Mulcher, which grinds marijuana buds into a fluffy, smokeable form – reportedly designed by a Nasa engineer. Stands of oak trees give way to conifers and wilder country, where the local newspaper is the Anderson Valley Advertiser, which, with its blocks of close print, looks as it might have done in 1900. The slogan on the masthead promises it's been "Fanning the flames of discontent", and articles about President Obama's foreign policy sit besides tales of local cannabis growers' brushes with the law.

Just past the farm where Wavy Gravy – compere of the Woodstock Festival in 1969 – holds an annual Earth Dance event, outbuildings with alien spaceships, a moonrise and Buddhist deities painted in fluorescent colours announce you've reached Area 101. The name is a play on the number of the route we've driven and on Area 51, the counterculture name for an airforce base in Nevada where aliens are supposedly developing aviation technology. Area 101, conversely, is a place "dedicated to personal growth and spiritual enlightenment", as the business card says. This venue for music and happenings is run by Tim Blake, the man with the silver-grey hair, who also co-owns a nearby farm that grows what is agreed on the grapevine in Mendocino to be "the best cannabis in the world". The intention is to turn the farm into a licensed dispensary for marijuana, too.

Blake has a Virgin of Guadalupe tattooed on his upper arm and the same figure cut with stained glass in the window, "which means the Mexicans leave me alone," he claims. Blake's enthusiasm for what he does has been boundless since he first came to northern California from the coast at Santa Cruz in the 60s, and it is informative to hear his account of history since then.

"The trailer we were pulling forward in the 60s got disconnected in the 70s. Big dealers moved in and derailed the psychedelic movement. Weed was grown under lights, cocaine was $10 an ounce. People were losing their minds, crack on the streets, speed everywhere, and the 80s and 90s were a mess.

"But then the energy started coming back. We've gone back to fetch the trailer. God put us right here, just north of the fault line system, just south of the volcano chain, where the pasture's good and the air stays clean. Where the marijuana is our saviour and nourishment. We believe it can change things, change the system, as well as being a safe place to change your headspace.

"I'm talking about the good stuff," he adds. "It's got to be the good stuff."

A woman called Pam arrives. Her face is beautiful, but weary and lined with tribulation. With her is her niece, Lisa, aged 18. Pam's son has committed suicide and so has her nephew, Lisa's brother. "I used to pass this place every day, driving between here and Reno, Nevada," says Pam, "but I never came in, never needed to. Now I've found it." Tim Blake chants a mantra, by way of demonstration, not meditation. Then out comes a bong, which Pam puffs before weeping and starting to feel better.

Marvin Levin of the Mendocino Farmers Collective is from Los Angeles and "too young to remember what it was like first time around." But he manages the farm here now, and he has a point to make. "We're not just using cannabis for smoking, we're using it in a dozen different medical ways and as a dietary supplement. For this, we need to grow it right. If you want to grow as much as you can as fast as you can, you'll grow something entirely different, pumped full of fertilisers."

For those at Area 101, who represent a set of Californian values that find expression in the language of hippiedom, the prospect of marijuana being legalised in November's state ballot seems welcome. None the less, to meet the denizens of Area 101 is to worry that their aspirations and message will be lost if pharmaceutical and tobacco companies arrive – that they will get squeezed out of the picture by Governor Schwarzenegger's embrace of what once was the counterculture.

It is with a note of optimism you hope isn't misplaced that Marvin Levin says: "We work in a non-profit closed loop, so we can ask people for feedback, and cultivate accordingly. We're not like the bikers or men with guns up in the woods. We're trying to do this for a better world, yes – but also for the neighbourhood."

As we say our goodbyes, I see a lovely old sign from the days before Area 101 on the wall, reading "Country Store and Deli."

"We've left it there," says Levin, "because that's what we're going to be. Why take down something you're going to need again some day? That's what we are: the Lost Coast Country Store and Deli!"

Guardian

Colombian marijuana plantations feeding Europe's drug habit

by Karl Penhaul

Through the afternoon downpour a horse plods along a muddy mountain path. I can smell him almost before he rounds the bend. He's weighed down with more than 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of freshly-picked marijuana.

A peasant farmer gees the animal along, anxious to get his crop into the dry. I stop the farmer and briefly pet the horse.

"He's called Stoner," the farmer tells me in Spanish, before breaking into a broad grin and setting off again. He was, of course, joking.

These are the mountains of Colombia's southwest Cauca province, far from the reach of the law and just as far from market -- making it difficult, the dirt-poor peasants say, to scrape a living selling legal produce.

Around every bend and in every village there's a surprise. Marijuana plantations stretch sometimes for several acres, clinging to steep-sided canyons.

Farmhands wielding machetes disappear amid a "forest" of thousands of plants, two or three times taller than a person. They reappear minutes later with a bundle of marijuana over their shoulder and head for rudimentary drying houses made of black plastic slung over wooden branches.

In some of these shacks hundreds of pounds of marijuana are hung out to dry.

In other communities, old ladies take advantage of a brief break in the rain to toss marijuana up to dry on the tin roofs of their homes. Others hang the herb in the rafters of the kitchen, where the strangely sweet smell mingles with the aroma of a stew cooking on a smoky fire.

This is a cottage industry. Weed is the cash crop of choice. The cheapest variety sells for around $4 a pound -- that's almost twice the price of coffee, which is the only other viable cash crop in these parts.

"We know we're doing harm to society. But this is what gives us an income because ordinary food crops are worth nothing," one marijuana grower tells me, asking me not to identify him by name. Cultivating marijuana is illegal here but many say it's their only means of survival.

Colombia's first marijuana boom came in the late 1960s and early 1970s and the country became a major supplier to the United States.

But Colombian marijuana gave way to the craze for cocaine. Then, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Colombian marijuana was totally squeezed out of the U.S. market by better quality home-grown weed, as well as imports from Canada and Mexico.

Now, in Cauca province at least, there's a new bonanza. This is one of the few regions of Colombia where, according to United Nations' anti-drug officials, the production of marijuana and coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine, is increasing. At the same time, Colombia is once again exporting good quality pot and has become a "major supplier" to Europe, according to the DEA.

The rugged terrain and the region's remoteness are part of the explanation why the new boom has taken root here.

It's difficult for Colombian security forces to get into the region and locate drug plantations. Moreover, the area is a stronghold for leftist FARC guerrillas.

Although none of the peasants say the FARC ran the drug trade in northern Cauca, they explain the rebels levy what they called a "war tax" of about $14 for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of marijuana trucked out of these hills and down to nearby towns and cities.

What seems clear is that few peasants are getting rich from growing drugs.

"I earn just enough to feed my family, send the kids to school and pay for clothes," one grower says as he strips buds from dried stalks. "There's an image abroad that if you grow drugs then you have gold chains or fine cars. That's false. I don't even have a bicycle," he says.

He does, however, have six children to feed and says he just couldn't earn enough selling the legal staples of plantains, yucca and squash.

In addition, the roads in these mountains are mostly dirt tracks, almost impassable when it rains heavily. Even when a bus or a truck does make it up to remote villages, farmers say the selling price for legal produce barely covers the cost of transporting their crops to market.

Once the marijuana is picked and dried, peasants sell it to middlemen -- sometimes bigger farmers or buyers who have come from the cities. The marijuana is pressed into 25-pound (12 kg) bales, often using a simple iron press and a car jack to compact the weed. Some farmers tell us some of the middlemen had more sophisticated electric-powered hydraulic presses too.

The best marijuana, however, is trimmed with kitchen scissors, bud by bud, and packed carefully in boxes.

The farmers have several names for the relatively new variety of marijuana they're sowing. Some call it "Dutch seed". Others call it "kryptonite."

They say it's a genetically-modified hybrid, bred originally in Holland and up to three times stronger than other varieties grown here.

"Colombian Red will get you high. But kryptonite will get you really stoned," one farmer tells me. He clarifies though, that he was not speaking from personal experience.

In more than a week in the region I do not manage to find a single farmer who smokes his own produce.

"We don't have any bad habits round here. Maybe some of us have a drink from time to time but none of us smoke that stuff," a farmhand in his 20s says.

The farmers seem to exhibit no sentimentality about their crop, to the point that peasant leaders in northern Cauca province are now putting a proposal to the government. They say they are ready to voluntarily eradicate their marijuana plantations on condition the government sets up a system of agricultural subsidies and invests in rural development programs.

"We're ready to voluntarily substitute drug crops on a gradual basis if the government invests in our communities and in the region. We want a development plan," Orlando Angel, a peasant leader from the hill village of Pedregal, tells me.
But he warns they would not begin the process until the government offers some concessions.

"If we just pull out the drug crops without any other guarantees of work then we're taking the food out of our children's mouths. We're taking away their chance of healthcare and chance of an education," he says.

Previous Colombian government crop substitution plans have usually been small-scale and unsuccessful. In the past, government officials paid one-time subsidies to farmers to pull out coca plants. But when those same farmers were unable to make a living selling legal produce they resorted to sowing drugs again.

According to Colombian government and U.N. figures, the area of coca plantations has diminished steadily over about the last five years. But that is not because of voluntary deals between the government and peasants but because of forced eradication carried out in the framework of the U.S.-funded "Plan Colombia" counter-drug program.

The government has not yet given a detailed response to the peasants' proposals in Cauca province. At a meeting in the town of Caloto in late April, neither the national government nor the provincial authorities sent delegates to talk with the peasants as agreed the previous month.

National government officials have asked for a new meeting at a so far unspecified date.

But at the same time, the government has been sending army troops into the region. Their mission, according to army officers, is to fight FARC guerrillas and once the area is stabilized to begin wiping out drug crops by force. That could set the stage for possible confrontation between poor, civilian farmers and the military.

"If the army tries to destroy our crops by force then we will organize protests," Angel, the peasant leader says. "We will march and we will block the major highways."


CNN

Cannabis trumps rice as cash crop in Sierra Leone

Farmers in Sierra Leone are increasingly cultivating cannabis instead of rice, which is denting food production in the country, Vice-President Sam Sumana said on February 17.

Speaking during a one-day meeting where regional ministers pledged to jointly fight drug traffickin, Sumana said "the cultivation of cannabis has a negative effect on (Sierra Leone's) food production capacity."

"During and after the war, in some parts of the country, more and more of our people are developing interest and diverting their energies into the cultivation and trade of cannabis in place of our staple food, rice."

A decade-long civil conflict in which 120,000 people died ended in 2002.

"The government is dismayed at this appalling situation and we are committed to do all we can to mitigate this threat and redivert the interest of our people to legitimate farming."

At Wednesday's meeting Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau and Liberia formed the West Africa Coast Initiative to deal with "threats posed by organised crime, illicit drug trafficking and drug abuse," according to a declaration.

United Nations data presented to the meeting indicated the West African sub-region was a hub for cocaine and other narcotics trafficking from Latin America into Europe, worth one billion dollars/euros annually.

Marijuana growers worsening California drought

by Eoin O'Carroll

Large marijuana plots hidden deep in California’s public lands have illegally diverted hundreds of millions of gallons of water, compounding shortages caused by the state’s ongoing drought.

Public officials in Mendocino County, a region on California’s north coast known for its lush redwood forests and potent cannabis, have witnessed rivers and creeks drained by the large-scale drug operations.

“They’re using a whole lot of water.” said Lt. Rusty Noe of the Mendocino County sheriff’s office in a telephone interview with the Bright Green Blog.

Lt. Noe noted that police have seized more than 500,000 pot plants this season in Mendocino County alone. Each plant requires about one gallon of water per day. California is entering the fourth year of a severe drought, with residents in some areas facing the first mandatory water restrictions in two decades and farms laying of thousands of workers.

“It’s really affecting our water supply,” said Noe of the illicit growing sites.

Noe also cited other environmental damage caused by the plantations, including the dumping of toxic chemicals and erosion of soil and underbrush.”These camps are just unbelievable,” said Noe, who noted that the problem is getting steadily worse each year.

“It is making a huge resource impact,” Dennis Slota, a hydrologist with the Mendocino County Water Agency, told the Bright Green Blog over the phone. Mr. Slota said that he knew personally of two steelhead trout streams that are now dead from illegal water diversion.

Slota suggested that most of the environmental destruction is caused not by Mendocino’s local pot growers, who have long taken advantage of the county’s mild climate and tolerant views toward the drug, but by mostly Mexican crime syndicates that, in the 1990s, began planting large plots deep in the woods, which they would abandon after the October-November harvest.

His views are echoed by Ron Pugh, a US Forest Service special agent, who was quoted in the spring issue of Terrain, a Northern California environmental magazine:

Says Pugh about the sheer volume of grows, “This is not a hippie thing.” He’s come prepared with a list of comparisons between a “hippie” grow and a DTO site—one maintained by a drug trafficking organization. A traditional garden on public lands, Pugh says, has one or two growers and fewer than fifty plants. The gardener, who lives locally, hikes in every other day or so, carrying water for his plants. Firearms are uncommon, and locations are predictable. “They’re within a quarter mile of a road,” Pugh explains, “and they’re rarely uphill. White guys are lazy.”

The DTO sites, on the other hand, are as remote as the growers can get, often three miles from the nearest road. They contain an average of 6,600 plants, tended by an average of seven growers who live in tents the entire season, from May to October. The growers are aided by scanners, radios, night-vision goggles, an arsenal of weapons, and truckloads of plastic pipe to divert area streams to their plants, sometimes from as far as a half-mile away. When they abandon the site in the fall, they leave behind mountains of trash, about as much trash as a small city dump.

Writing for Blue Living Ideas, a news website that covers water issues, Jennifer Lance notes that only 1 in 8 of those arrested in Mendocino this season for growing marijuana are from the county. She also notes that the county’s district attorney is investigating at least one recently seized grow operation for “environmental crimes” and “water diversion,” on top of drug crimes.

Christian Science Monitor

Low food crop prices drive some Kenyan farmers to marijuana cultivation

by Najum Mushtaq

Kenyan small-scale farmers have moved across the border into Tanzania to cultivate marijuana or ‘‘bhang’’, as the Cannabis sativa plant is locally called. One of them is 25-year-old Steve Odhiambo. He believes that the international and local campaign against bhang harms only the small growers while the true profiteers get away.

For the past 10 years, Kenya’s anti-narcotics unit has conducted a concerted campaign to eradicate cultivation and trade of bhang. Hundreds of hectares of plantations in the Mount Kenya regions of Embu and Meru are bulldozed or put on fire each year. Plans to kill the illegal crop, hidden in clearings amidst remote forests, with aerial sprays had to be put off because of opposition from environmentalists.

Of the 17,578 people arrested from 2005 to 2007 on drug-related charges, more than 500 were the growers of cannabis. As a result, according to recent police estimates, Kenya’s output of marijuana has come down to 80 tons per year with a street value of 15 dollars per kg. Yet, the country remains the biggest consumer of bhang in east Africa.

‘‘The demand in the consumption market has not come down despite the curbs on production,’’ says an official of the anti-narcotics unit, who estimates that the supply is almost double the local produce because ‘‘wholesale and retail bhang dealers find other sources of acquiring the contraband. It’s a constant battle we have to fight.’’

A major front in this battle is the 769 km border with Tanzania. Most of the marijuana consumed in Kenya is grown in Tanzania and brought into the country across the largely unmarked border. It is impossible to police due to the cultural and linguistic affinity of people living on both sides, and the constant free movement of cattle and people.

Tanzanian farmers are not the only producers in the market. The police crackdown on Kenyan bhang farmers has forced many to rent land in the thick hilly forests across the border, mainly in the Arusha district.

It was 10 years ago when orphaned Steve Odhiambo left his hometown Migori in the Nyanza province to rent a half-hectare piece of land across the border in Roria to grow bhang.

‘‘I was just 15 years old and the first year of farming proved to be disastrous. The rain was good and the harvest was healthy but I had no experience of marketing the crop. I spent more money bribing people on both sides than I earned,’’ Odhiambo said.

Asked why he decided to take up farming of an illegal substance as his source of livelihood, Odhiambi said growing maize, sugarcane or other food crops on small farms brings no money. There is a lot of ‘‘free land’’ on the Tanzanian side available for farming for as low as 25 to 30 dollars per acre for a season.

‘‘Bhang is used as a rotational crop, ready for harvesting in four to five months. Usually, I also grow it as a second crop within a maize or sugarcane field, which helps to keep it hidden,’’ Odhiambo said.

In a good year, harvest from his small farm can fetch up to 15,000 shillings (200 dollars). The biggest cost of production is the pair of pickers Odhiambo has to hire to reap the harvest. They charge about 10 dollars for their work. Other family members also give a helping hand.

Odhiambo tells that most of the Kenyans farming in Tanzania rent small, half to one hectare plots usually hidden in thick forests on the hilly slopes. Both men and women of the family take part in the enterprise.

But he does not smuggle the compact bushels, or haystacks called stones, back into Kenya. That is done by traffickers whom he refused to identify, except as ‘‘people in big cars or small trucks coming from Mombasa, Nairobi or other big cities to buy the harvest’’.

They are also the main profiteers, whereas small farmers like Odhiambo keeps struggling for survival in poverty. Two-hundred dollars, the net income of Odhiambo, is less than the market price of just one large bushel he sells to the interlocutors.

Despite the temptation of increasing his meagre profit, Odhiambo is not willing to take the risk of directly accessing the underground market, mainly in Kenya’s tourism hotspots.

Like most other aspects of the Kenyan economy, trade in illegal drugs too is largely dependent on tourism. Last year was one of Odhiambo’s best whereas violent troubles in 2008 have cut the demand and his profit down to about 140 dollars.

A third component in the economy of illegal drugs consists of small-time retailers in urban areas who complete the chain by selling the product to end-users. Like the small farmers, the margin of profit here too is much smaller than what the interlocutors are likely to make.

Odhiambo’s cousin, David Otieno, is a ‘‘beach boy’’ in Mombasa, selling thin rolls for 20 to 30 shillings (30 to 40 cents) a piece. He buys a small stone for eight dollars which, after the value addition of being rolled in cigarette papers, will fetch him 16 dollars.

On the other hand, in March this year reports by the U.S. state department’s bureau of international narcotics and law enforcement affairs and International Narcotics Control agency raised queries about Kenya’s ability and commitment to the fight against drug-trafficking.

These American agencies said drug barons have been covering their illegal activities in Kenya by paying off law enforcement and other government officials as well as politicians. They estimated that drug lords could be laundering about seven billion shillings or 100 million dollars annually through Kenya.

‘‘The common perception that growing marijuana means some kind of wealth is false,’’ says Odhiambo, ‘‘People believe that because it is illegal, it brings large profits to growers. The fact is that the drive against bhang mainly targets only the growers -- most of who are forced to resort to growing bhang because of poverty.’’

He advocates legalisation. ‘‘My experience says that if it is legalised, farmers like me would be able to access the market directly and thus make more profit.’’

As long as it is illegal, Odhiambo explains, the big landowners, who can protect their crops with armed guards, and the drug barons, who can manipulate the system, will remain the major beneficiaries of this trade.

IPS

Morocco anti-drug effort sees drastic decrease in cannabis cultivation

The Moroccan Ministry of the Interior has said that the cultivation of cannabis in the north of the country has slumped by some 55% from 134,000 hectares in 2003 to 60,000 hectares this year. An official statement said the Ministry expected to see the area under cultivation of the drug to slump to less than 50,000 hectares in 2009.

"Since the implementation of the national strategy of the fight against drugs, the Moroccan authorities have adopted an energetic policy aimed at gradually redu c ing cannabis cultivation and fight against drug trafficking," an official statement of the Interior ministry indicated.

During this year, the Moroccan security services seized 88 tons of cannabis.

Last year, Moroccan customs officers seized a record 35 tons of cannabis, up 25.7% on the 2006 figures. The value of seized drug was about 140 million Euros.

Cultivated since 15th century in the central Rif, cannabis farming has extended during the last 20 years up to the Atlantic coast in north-western Morocco.

The global production of the narcotic plant in 2003 was valuated at 47,400 tons with about 800,000 Moroccans living partially of the illicit drug.

Afriquenligne

Ghanaian farmer arrested for innovative inter-cropping

The cultivation of marijuana, popularly known in Ghana as "wee," seems to be gaining ground despite strenuous efforts by the police to curb it.

Barely one month after a 28-year-old farmer was arrested for cultivating three hectares of the crop amidst some vegetables, the police at Agogo have arrested another suspect for a similar offence at Pewodie, a farming community near Agogo.

This time the suspect, Walayire Wansa, 45, inter-cropped the narcotic drug with maize, rice and pepper on a one-and-half hectare farm to outwit the police. He admitted ownership of the farm but insisted he cultivated the plant for his own consumption and not for commercial purposes.

My Joy

Swazi farmers find marijuana a lucrative crop to grow

Farmers in the southern African kingdom of Swaziland are making decisions to grow marijuana and local police say they can't stop them.

From high in the kingdom's remote northern mountains comes "Swazi Gold," a potent variety sought after in consumer markets in nearby South Africa, which completely surrounds Swaziland, as well as in Europe and North America. For Swazi farmers, marijuana, or "dagga," as it is commonly known in southern Africa, is a crop worth growing, despite police raids and herbicide spraying. Smugglers will pay farmers about $150 a kilogram, a significant amount in a country where the average annual income hovers around $1500.

That same "Swazi Gold" will sell for about $11 an ounce in Johannesburg or Capetown. By the time it makes its way to the coffee shops of Amsterdam, it goes for $7.50 a gram.

Swazi law enforcement finds itself fighting a losing battle as it butts up against dagga's profitability. "We can't win this war," said Ngwane Dlamini, head of criminal investigation in the northern region of Hhohho. "This is just a drop in the ocean," he said as he showed a field that had been discovered and destroyed. "The people are poor and they can get much more money for marijuana than maize or vegetables," he said.

According to Swaziland's Council Against Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 70% of farmers in the Hhohho region are growing dagga for the domestic and international market. Local officials blame drought and point to the mountainous terrain, which makes maize-growing difficult. But a Hhohho woman named Khanyesile provided a more direct reason.

"My husband died and I lost my job at the local furniture factory," said Khanyesile. "I needed money to feed my five children and send them to school." She has been jailed and fined for her dagga, she said, police have twice sprayed her field, and thieves stole her crop once just before harvest. For Khanyesile and her family, the black market in dagga is the only shot at economic survival. "You can't get money for maize...and it is difficult to grow, but a man from South Africa comes every month to buy my dagga," she said. She and her neighbors grow dagga and sell it jointly to the South African buyer to minimize his risks, she said. "I don't understand why the police want to stop us growing dagga - it is the only way we can make money."

"It is everywhere. At every stream or river the banks are full of dagga," said Inspector Dlamani. That's not surprising. Not only has dagga become a valuable cash crop, it has a long history of acceptance in Swaziland, where it has been smoked for centuries by farmers and used as medicine by healers. Even the chief of his home village smoked a pipe of dagga twice daily, Dlamani noted, before returning to the fruitless fight.

stopthedrugwar.org

Morocco slashes marijuana cultivation levels

Morocco, which has slashed cannabis cultivation by nearly half over the past four years, hopes to eradicate the main remaining area of cultivation in the northern Rif mountains by opening up the region and introducing substitute crops.

The eradication programme encourages farmers to switch to other crops, especially on fertile land where the growing of cannabis is a recent development, said Khalid Zerouali, a senior official at the Interior Ministry. "In the Rif mountain chain we are centring our efforts on non-agricultural infrastructure and activities such as rural tourism," he said. "Opening these areas up plays an important role in reducing cannabis." Production of cannabis resin, or hashish, which amounted to 3 070 tonnes in 2003, has already dropped by 61% in the area, according to Zerouali.

That mirrors the progress across the country. A 2003 inquiry sponsored by the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) using both observations on the ground and satellite pictures put at 134,000ha the area used to grow cannabis. "This area has been cut to 72,500ha at present, a drop of 46%," Zerouali said.

Whereas in the period between 1999 and 2003, 31% of UNODC member states cited Morocco as source of hashish seized in their countries, a recent report put the figure for 2005 at only 20%. The quantities of the drug seized worldwide dropped in 2005, largely because of "less production of this resin in Morocco."

According to the UNODC, Africa accounts for 26% of world cannabis production, behind the Americas (46%). The plant is grown in many African countries, in particular South Africa, Nigeria and Morocco, the UNODC says.

Cannabis has been grown since the 15th century in the central Rif, a mountainous and remote area. The 2003 inquiry highlighted the "major economic dependence" on the plant of 96 000 families who relied heavily on it for an income. The farmers make relatively little money -- about $214-million a year -- while the turnover worldwide generated by the output reached $12-billion in 2003, the UNODC inquiry found.

Morocco has since strengthened surveillance of areas under cultivation and increased the number of drug seizures and prosecutions of traffickers, who are sometimes in league with senior security officers.

Mail and Guardian

Swazi official suggests cultivation of marijuana as a cash crop

The administrator of Swaziland's Manzini region, Prince Masitsela, has said there is an untapped potential of dagga (marijuana) being the core of the Swazi economy. The Prince made these remarks when speaking at the official opening of Manzini region's mini-agricultural summit.

Masitsela said he had been tipped off on the potential of dagga on several occasions whilst abroad, especially in Europe. "Lensangu yakini le ingu-grade one (this dagga from Swaziland is of the highest quality). Lensangu lifa lemaSwati (dagga is the real Swazi gold)," he related.

There are several street names for dagga, including marijuana, zol, skyf, joint, weed, grass, s**t, pot, boom, ganja, dope, hash, smoke, mary jane, hemp and green gold.

Masitsela said since there were difficulties with legalising the herb, government should consider monopolising dagga trade for itself, including taking care of growing and processing it as well as exporting it to eager overseas markets. He also suggested that the dagga be grown and processed locally into medication for exportation. He said the money generated from its sale could then be invested in subsidising the entire agricultural industry.

The debate about the herb's potential as a revenue spinner to boost the country's economy dates back a few years. Even though police have been destroying dagga fields every year, it is estimated that about 70 percent of farmers in the Hhohho region plant dagga for a living. Most of them have attributed this to poverty.

Swazi dagga has found its way not only to South Africa but also into the European market. In Johannesburg, for example, it is called "Swazi Gold." The herb is usually smuggled into South Africa and Mozambique for shipment to Europe.

Swazi Observer

Strong demand drives lucrative marijuana cultivation in Nigeria

Cannabis is outlawed worldwide but in Nigeria, the plant remains a consumer delight, encouraging its cultivation both for consumption and export. Akerele in Surulere, Lagos, is one of the country's thriving marijuana markets. Dealer Tajudeen Sule cherishes the deluge of students, teenagers and adults, prostitutes, urchins, police officers and soldiers flocking to his stall for their daily fix of spiff.

The brown and greenish grain of Asian flora has never failed him. Seventeen years into the trade, the 32-year old cannabis merchant boasts, "No salary earner can live like I live. Here, we live like kings. We live loud. Not that we rob and steal. Business is just very good."

It is hot out there. It is very cold too. Bitter noon time heat and the piercing, steely coldness of cannabis peddlers who ply their trade in the slummy suburb of Akerele. Here, all things merge into one, and a vileness runs through it all. Akerele is a constellation of hopefuls. A melting point of commerce where Igbos, Yorubas, Hausas, Ijaws and other ethnic nationalities jostle for their share from the much touted promises of Lagos. Within and around the neighbourhood, the shrill blare of passing vehicles, the babble of the various cells of makeshift markets, noise from the music shops, the natters and wild altercation of passenger touts and commercial bus drivers and the heady aroma of marijuana all mix.

Cannabis was introduced into Nigeria in the wake of World War II and is cultivated in all 36 of the country's states for consumption and export. The country has improved in its production, recording the second-largest cannabis seizure in Africa, after South Africa, in 2004 and coming fourth in the world with 683,101 seizures; about 11 per cent of the total world seizures, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, in its 2006 World Drug Report.

Raphael Okon, a courier based in Benin, Edo State, maintains that cannabis cultivation is a worthwhile venture that deserves government support. "Many people take cannabis as an intoxicant. Others use it to cure various illnesses. It is also used in making cosmetics," he says.

A 25-kilogramme sack of cannabis is sold between 7,000 and 9,000 Naira ($55-$70) . Packages meant for export are compressed and sealed with tape, masking the characteristic aroma of the plant. A bag of cannabis bought at N8,000 from rural farmers could be sold in a city like Port Harcourt at N25,000 ($200) or more. When the same bag crosses to Borneo or any other northern state, the price could hit N35,000 to N40,000. If compacted for export, a dealer could earn as much as N50,000 ($400) or more on each package.

Cannabis smugglers have devised various means of getting the banned plant to the points of purchase. For instance, three years ago, a medic and policeman were arrested after smugglers were found to be using an ambulance belonging to the Supreme Court to smuggle hemp into the market. In a separate incident, three policemen in Afuze, Owan East of Edo State were arrested recently for dealing in cannabis. The police officers and the leader of a vigilante group allegedly arrested a cannabis farmer. Trouble started when the police officers allegedly extorted an N80,000 ($630) pay-off and attempted to make away with bags of cannabis after beating their quarry to a pulp.

Five states lead in the production of cannabis in Nigeria. They are Edo, Delta, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun states. It is claimed the cannabis produced in Edo and Ondo is among the best in the world, making it more expensive than others and providing a ready world-wide market for it, according to a source.

The Sun