Chairman/Chief Executive of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) Brig. Gen. Mohammed Buba Marwa (Retd) has explained why cannabis cannot be legalised in the country at the moment.
The NDLEA boss who was speaking at a public lecture in Akure on Friday, said cannabis cannot be legalized in the country due to the current security challenges.
Represented by his Special Adviser on National Drug Control Master Plan (NDCMP) Otunba Lanre Ipinmisho, Marwa noted that hard drugs is the driver of high crime rate and violent killings in the inner cities of advanced world countries.
He said “In developing or Third World countries, it is the escalator of strife, pogroms and civil war, and has played a big role in countries torn to pieces by tribal war, such as it is playing out in Syria, which has become the hotbed of Captagon, and Afghanistan, which controls the opium trade.
“We have seen narco-terrorism in countries like Colombia and Mexico where drug cartels are law unto themselves and are as powerful, if not more powerful, than the State. So, there are real cases, not scenarios, of where and how illicit substances played a role in a society’s rapid descent into chaos and tettering on the brink of a failed state.
“So the pertinent question for us today is: Has drugs played any role in the festering insecurity in Nigeria? The answer is yes. Of this we have ample evidence.
“We do not have the luxury of allowing a narcotic economy to take root and thrive in our society. Africa, nay, Nigeria has enough problems without adding the burden of narco-terrorism.
“Of all the known illicit substances, Cannabis sativa is the only one that is native to Nigeria and it is the most abused of all illicit drugs, and from the findings of the National drug Survey of 2018, cannabis is becoming a national albatross”
Marwa who further revealed that the population of Nigerians that depend on cannabis alone is more than the population of countries like Portugal, Greece or the Republic of Benin, added that the country cannot afford to toy with the grim reality of the danger of legalising cannabis when all the needed infrastructure to monitor and control that are still far from being in place.
