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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 10, No. 9

Publication Date: September 25, 2023

DOI:10.14738/assrj.109.15486.

Olungah, C. O. (2023). Emerging Quest for Cannabis Policy Reforms: Growing Voices from Men and the Younger Population at the

Grassroots in Kenya. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(9). 42-72.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Emerging Quest for Cannabis Policy Reforms: Growing Voices

from Men and the Younger Population at the Grassroots in Kenya

Charles Owuor Olungah

Department of Anthropology, Gender & African Studies, University of Nairobi-Kenya

“Meru Couple jailed for Life for Trafficking Kshs 3 million Marijuana” (Daily

Nation 30th September 2021).

“Man sentenced to Life Imprisonment for Trafficking bhang worth Kshs 23,250”

(The Standard of 16th May 2018).

“Why Small Amount of Bhang Earned Woman 30-year Sentence” (Kenya News of

23rd May 2019).

These screaming headlines three years apart provide a glimpse to the effects of prohibitionist

regulations currently in force in Kenya with regard to possession, consumption and trafficking

in cannabis. Of all the three mentioned cases, the third one involving the woman sentenced to

30-years in prison elicited the comments that best captures the mood of the nation in regards

to the regulations.

Trafficking bhang worth Kshs 2,820 has cost Rose Wanjiru a 30-year-old jail sentence without

the option of a fine. The judge noted that Wanjiru was not a first-time offender but had been

charged with a similar offense previously.

The following comments were registered online from members of the public following this

development: “Justice system is dead; moving hardcore drugs and looting public resources are

backed by big wigs and so the peddlers are untouchable---- welcome to Kenya where the poor

are strangled whilst the rich who loot our resources and share them go scot free; Is Uhuru

aware?; Others traffic cocaine, heroin and other hard core drugs why aren’t they arrested?; Kesi

kubwa kubwa sentence ndogo ndogo, but ya mwizi wa kuku--- life imprisonment Balaa Kenya

(Big cases attract low fines and cases involving the small chicken thieves attract life sentences,

what a tragedy in Kenya); Thirty years for what? Just being in possession of Marijuana? Did

someone just lose their mind?; It is 2019, Marijuana is being legalized all over the world and is

even being used for health reasons, magical Kenya; This is crazy, but anyway our justice system

was designed for the weak in the society while the high and mighty walk free even after looting

our economy; The corrupt judiciary needs an overhaul, yaani you jail a poor woman for 30 years

who is struggling to feed and educate her children while people who steal billions walk away

free?; Indeed this is Kenya which has two tribes- the haves and the have-nots, God bless Kenya”

The reactions to the 30-year-old woman’s case above brings out several misgivings on the

prohibitionist policies currently in force regarding narcotics in general and marijuana in

particular. The many views apparently directed to the judiciary ought to be reserved for the

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Olungah, C. O. (2023). Emerging Quest for Cannabis Policy Reforms: Growing Voices from Men and the Younger Population at the Grassroots in

Kenya. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(9). 42-72.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.109.15486

policy formulators and gives us the opportunity to add a voice in the debate about

decriminalization and legalization of cannabis in Kenya.

INTRODUCTION

UNODC (2008) observes that Cannabis is the most widely used illicit substance globally with

5.6% of adults and youth aged 15-64 years reporting use. The world body singles out Africa as

one of the continents with the highest users per the population at 7.7% (UNODC, 2007) with a

projected rise to 40% in 2050 (UNODC, 2021). For centuries, the drug has been used across

cultures for medicinal, recreational and sacramental purposes (Abel et al., 2011).

Despite its use for centuries across cultures for medicinal, recreational and sacramental

purposes (Abel et al., 2011), the drug has been noted to be by far the most widely trafficked and

abused illicit drug and accounts for half of all the drugs seizures worldwide (WHO, 2016).

In Kenya, marijuana is the most widely used narcotic drug with prevalence stabilizing at 1%

from 2007-2017 (Kamanderi et al., 2019a). Regional variations in consumption have been

noted with the Coast region reporting a 2.8% followed by Nyanza at 2% and Nairobi at 1.4%

among the 15–65-year-olds. The drug has also accounted for a 7.5% of drug use among

secondary school students (Kamanderi et al., 2019b).

The use and trade in cannabis has been documented in Africa for centuries. Duvall (2019)

reports that cannabis came to Africa at least 1,000 years ago arriving in Madagascar and later

to the Mediterranean Coast. During this period, the Pre-colonial and Colonial sources across the

North Africa associated cannabis with lower social classes, particularly farmers, soldiers, slaves

and prostitutes (Duvall, 2017). It is reported that Colonial French troops smoked cannabis with

prostitutes in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia (Taraud, 2003) while in French Morocco,

prostitutes spent half their income or more on alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco (Maghraoui,

2013). This association with low classes could be one of the reasons why the legal status of

cannabis has remained so for so long in Africa. Despite the association of cannabis use with the

low class, cannabis has been traded in Africa for centuries (Duvall, 2019). Perhaps the quote

below captures the ambivalent view by which cannabis is seen by different lenses.

“To the agriculturist cannabis is a fibre crop; to the physician of a century ago, it

was a valuable medicine; to the physician of today, it is an enigma; to the users, a

euphoriant; to the police, a menace; to the traffickers, a source of profitable danger;

to the convict or parolee and his/her family, a source of sorrow” (Mikuriya, 1973:

xiii).

Generally, Colonial regimes suppressed cannabis since it was seen as a menace. Colonialists

considered African cannabis an Eastern hindrance to Europe’s civilizing mission. The settlers

increasingly forbade cannabis as morally and/ or physically harmful even though they

continued to supply the black laborers. This attitude can be summed up by a quote attributed

to a British administrator in the Belgian Congo:

“The tobacco introduced by the Portuguese has contended successfully against the

stupefying or maddening hemp from the afar Muhammadan north-east” (Johnston,

1908).

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 10, Issue 9, September-2023

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

It has been observed that cannabis-control laws were enacted in Africa earlier than elsewhere

in the world (Duvall, 2016). The laws were stricter too and were apparently aimed at improving

public health by prohibiting behaviours considered detrimental to “native” health. Clearly and

as observed by Duvall (2006), many of these laws served ulterior motives, particularly labour

control and religious proselytizing. The British Natal’s 1870 law aimed to control Indian

laborers while Portuguese Angola’s 1913 law targeted colonial troops while also pushing

farmers toward tobacco production (Duvall, 2016).

Prohibition (Criminalization), Decriminalization and Legalization of Marijuana

Today, one of the biggest debates worldwide is the law reforms currently sweeping across the

globe in regard to the status of marijuana. It is worth stating from the onset that in Africa,

cannabis was initially legal under colonial governments (Duvall, 2019) but this later changed

as noted above. Today, the three main legal approaches to cannabis regulation are Prohibition,

Decriminalization and Legalization (Arrara’s and Bello-Pardo, 2015:174).

Prohibition has been the prevailing choice of policy worldwide, prohibiting or banning the

production, sale, possession and consumption of the drug and treating all those acts as crime

(criminalization) (Hoz Schilling, 2015).

On the other hand, Legalization has been described as “an acknowledgement that the

government has no fundamental interest in an individual’s use of a drug, although it may still

seek to regulate its sale, distribution, use and advertisement to safeguard the public’s health”,

while decriminalization “refers to the elimination, reduction, and or non-enforcement of

penalties for the sale, purchase, or possession of marijuana although such activities remain

illegal” (Joffe and Yancy, 2004: 633; Hammond et al., 2020). Regarding marijuana legalization

and or decriminalization, different jurisdictions will attach diverse weights to the importance

of things like liberty, privacy, safety, limits of police discretion amongst others (Blumenson and

Nielsen, 2009). Legalization therefore, means that marijuana would be legally available to

adults (Morse, 2016). Globally, legalization has been a controversial issue owing to the various

moral, ethical, public health, legislative and logistical issues associated with the matter

(Hajizadeh, 2016).

The 1912 Hague Opium Convention marked the very first time that the guidelines for

internationally coordinated drug control was established (Hoz Schilling, 2015). Even though

the focus was on the ban of Opium, some delegates inadvertently introduced the discussion on

cannabis regulation where some first regulatory strategies were incorporated. It is reported

that “Many delegates were bewildered by the introduction of cannabis into the discussions.

Pharmaceutical cannabis products were widespread in the early 20th Century and the

participants had no substantive knowledge, due to lack of statistics on international trade or

even a clear scientific definition of the substance” (Bewley-Taylor et al., 2014: 13). As a result

of the above, Duvall (2016 and 2019) observes that colonial governments widely outlawed

cannabis by the 1925 when it ultimately became subject to the international control under the

Geneva Opium Convention. This was based on a request by the South Africa’s white minority

government supported by newly independent Egypt (Mills, 2003) whose conservative

authorities had suppressed cannabis since 1868 to control laborers as earlier stated (Kozma,

2011).