Rotimi Akeredolu, Governor of Ondo State has give reasons why Nigeria must legalise cannabis cultivation.
He said that the weed being a potential strong foreign exchange earner for Nigeria because of medical components, the cultivation should be legalised.
Akeredolu who is also the Chairman of Southern Governor’s Forum was speaking at an event to mark his 100 days in office.
According to him, “We must find a way to legalise the cultivation of cannabis for medical purposes. There is nothing wrong about it. We are only shooting ourselves in the foot. It is a foreign exchange earner for people around this country. People want this. We ourselves, even our pharmacies want to develop it.
“I travelled out of here and I was in Thailand trying to study the cultivation of cannabis for pharmaceutical use. We did all these, we even went there with NDLEA (National Drug Law Enforcement Agency), the chairman at that time went with us, maybe he came and said what we went for was for a different thing but that was why we went and all I felt and that let us look at the way they did it over there.
“Everybody has a drug problem, most countries have drug problems. We are having it here, it is not as pronounced here as in other places but there are ways they went about these things that those who are involved in drugs, those who are selling, those who are exporting had other ways of doing things that they had to leave it. So, when we talk about cultivation, we are saying in which it is a monitored one, in which NDLEA will have an office (near farms).”
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