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{
    "id": 1071040,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1071040/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 1019,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Igembe North, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Maoka Maore",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13344,
        "legal_name": "Richard Maore Maoka",
        "slug": "richard-maore-maoka"
    },
    "content": " Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, the Narcotics, Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Control Act was enacted in this House for the first time in 1994. Between then and now, a lot of things have happened, including the new law that came to give a lot of rights to narcotics users. The right time to amend that Act is now. The timing should also include addressing something about the Schedule. If you noticed, over the last few years, several countries have got the chance to get into the psychotropic substances Act whereby cannabis sativa or bhang is classified as a serious narcotic. It remains so and it should remain so. However, there has been a trend where there is a lot of money to be made by the countries that will be swift and quick to adopt the issue of growing medicinal marijuana . There is a difference between growing medicinal marijuana and legalising marijuana . This should come out very clearly when our people are addressing the issue because I know there is a mix-up. Medical marijuana is highly controlled with very few licences issued. I am told that Uganda issued four licences only. So, it is only four companies which can produce it for the purpose of taking it into laboratories and then for export. We can end up with billions of shillings out of this venture if as a country we can move swiftly and amend the Psychotropic Substances Act and introduce the issue of medical marijuana . If we are slow, it will be out of myopia, which is not very wise. If there is money to be made and medical benefits to be realised, I hope in the process of these deliberations, we will get people like Hon. (Dr.) Nyikal to do an insight into the benefits of medical marijuana, and how its production and processing can be controlled. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, when we talk about narcotics, this country has had a lot of laxity in the enforcement of these substances. I remember in 2004 we had an incident where a big consignment of drugs was seized in Malindi. The big names that were invoked were very vicious and to show how powerful they were, one of the evenings, actually after 7.00 O’clock, after the then Director of Public Prosecutions, Philip Murgor, had ordered investigations of certain individuals and because he was a bit rough and focused, he saw a fax. There were no emails at that time. It was a fax. By the time the paper finished running, it was firing him. That is how he got fired in 2004 at 7.00 O’clock. He pursued the so called untouchables in the narcotics trade. They had serious protection."
}