Recentering the Marijuana Community: ‘Abolition’ at the 5th National Cannabis Conference

Speakers at the RCG’s 5th National Cannabis Conference convened on April 20th to discuss the theme “Abolish Cannabis Prohibition.” Despite their varied emphases, they converged on a shared position: prohibition is untenable and increasingly indefensible. The conference also shed light on how legalization and decriminalization so often reproduce injustice. As CiC Ernesto Yeboah of the Economic Fighters League noted, it “dealt seriously with why the abolition of cannabis is becoming increasingly inevitable, and why many reforms around legalization and decriminalization still reproduce injustice.” The event marked a break from the legalization framing which often sidelines everyday users, pushers and farmers.

Ras Kofi Asante, RCG Administrator, grounded the discussion in the marijuana community’s originary demand: end arrests and release those detained for cannabis. His abolitionist intervention was crucial as legalization discourse, shaped around revenue and regulation is not just better-known. It has often drifted from that core and continues to reproduce the very injustices it claims to solve. Keynote speaker Prof. Imhotep Paul Alagidede (University of Ghana Bank of Ghana Finance and Economics Chair) elaborated on this contradiction as he outlined the herb’s indigenous significance and economic potential. Analyst and businessman Ras Sedem Ofori, proposed state-led cannabis planting as a soil remediation project to restore land damaged by ‘galamsey.’ This would also create jobs. Ras Aswad Nkrabea, representing Black Agenda, detailed a petition to the Auditor-General calling for a full accounting of seizures” and destruction of hemp to save money.

Media coverage was split. 3News centred the community’s abolitionist demand, while others emphasized the familiar trope of projected financial gains. Revenue projections have been the selling point of legalization discourse though legalization extends prohibition in new forms. As legalization is yet to significantly improve economic conditions anywhere, we must be clear that Africa’s financial constraints stem from imposed systems, not the absence of a lucrative export. Legalization’s licensing regimes concentrate on benefits for foreign investors, not the marijuana community.

Stressing legalization’s job creation and revenue generation instead of abolition may sound palatable to the state. But this financial narrative, this compromise, is precisely what invites and enables corporate capture. And, legalization’s limits on quantities and potencies - especially where testing infrastructure is lacking and police are poorly paid - creates openings for harassment, extortion or worse.

The theme of the conference advanced a different approach than state-regulated legalization. Regulation should mainly emerge from the marijuana community’s value system itself. Ras Asante called for cooperatives across localities to steward the marijuana community’s socio-cultural and economic practices. By elaborating and normalizing the systematic knowledge of the community’s values, cooperatives would, among other things, discourage anti-social behavior, and harmful adulteration or the sale of poor quality herb.

The recentering of the marijuana community, after the state and some advocates have failed to do so, was quite significant. Since the 1925 Opium Conference (where the community was acknowledged), alienating classifications such as 'medical’ and ‘scientific’ have been imposed. These categories were later expanded into ‘industrial,’ ‘recreational,’ and ‘sacramental.’ Useful for analysis, they remain vague for lived practice and ultimately obscure the marijuana community’s actual interests. It is a fact that colonial bans in Africa targeted marijuana users because they were an insurgent force against the colonial political economy. Yet even at the 1925 conference, delegates conceded that prohibition would not work in Africa. Also the 1961 Single Convention allowed states where the herb grows naturally to make narrow exemptions for ‘small groups’ that use it in ‘religious and magical rites.’ It sounded good, but misread a culture that far exceeds such limits, as Ras Asante reminded us.

All said, the 5th National Cannabis Conference brought some clarity to the issue by recentering the marijuana community. Though the term ‘legalization’ is popular, the original demand has not changed: Abolition - ending arrests and releasing detainees. This is the starting point.