Taking the nation to a new ‘high’

By N Sathiya Moorthy

At a time when India, Sri Lanka and Maldives are fighting international drug menace jointly and severally, comes President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s budget that has proposed legalising cannabis cultivation. 

The idea is to help boost farm-produce (?) exports and forex reserves, which are at the lowest level since the economic crisis hit the country. The irony is that not just this government, but its two immediate predecessors, namely, those of Presidents Maithripala Sirisena and his successor Gotabaya Rajapaksa, too had toyed with the idea rather seriously.

The Sri Lankan Tamil parties too may have reservations as increasing cases of drug addition are being reported from Jaffna Peninsula, starting with Jaffna town, more so among the youth and the students – and it is slowly becoming a huge social issue. According to reports, the government is setting up de-addiction and rehabilitation centres.

The security forces too have set up new check-points for frisking suspects (as if small-time operatives would be carrying the ‘stuff’ in tons, and would also be using the main roads. Local political opinion has it that all of it is aimed at thwarting the pro-LTTE ‘Heroes Day’ later this month – nothing more, nothing less.

Public health, public good

Whatever that be, you have Minister for Indigenous medicine Sisira Jayakody announcing the decision to present a Cabinet paper on permission to produce cannabis on a commercial basis, but only for Ayurvedic and other medicinal and research purposes – as has been the case for long. This time round, enough quantities would be grown and harvested, to meet the huge demand in overseas markets for medicine and beauty applications, he has said.

Incidentally, Minister Jayakody had said as much when he was holding the same portfolio under predecessor President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. From the present-day Opposition, Dr Rajitha Senaratne, a medical doctor who was Health Minister under the earlier government of President Sirisena, too had taken a similar line.

Participating in the budget debate in Parliament, Rajitha welcomed the government’s proposal and said that the nation could earn $ 5 b annually from exporting cannabis. The idea at the time was to cultivate cannabis using the security forces, he said and conceded that it did not materialise because of opposition from various sections.

As was to be expected, speaking for the JVP, former parliamentarian Sunil Handunnetti has opposed the budget proposal. Again, as was to be noted, he said that like with bar licences which are owned by politicians from the two main parties, permits for cannabis cultivation would also mostly go to the political class. As he pointed out, parents who are already anxious about the increasing drug consumption even among school-going children, should be concerned even more.

Lone supporter

It is in this background that the mood of the nation needs to be addressed, and would be addressed by the government and also individual law-makers and the political parties to which they belong. Barring a lone legislator, Dayana Gamage, from the Treasury Benches, no law-maker has commented on the issue. She is facing a disqualification case, under the ‘dual citizenship’ law.

They may, as always, give it a thought only when it comes up before Parliament, that too after TV talk-shows and sporadic social media posts begin debating it. Alternatively, someone has to move the Supreme Court to pre-empt either the government’s more, or more certainly to prevent the law, as and when a bill is presented to Parliament.

However, most criticism for the proposal, whenever made, has come from men of religion. Ven. Omalpe Sobitha Thera, Buddhist monk with strong views on social issues and politics, has condemned the current move by the government. When the idea was flagged in 2020, In 2020, Ven. Dhammalankara Thera, chief prelate of Kotte Sri Kalayani Samagri Dharma Maha Sangha of Siyam Maha Nikaya, had said that legalised cultivation of cannabis, will lead to a ‘national problem’.

This, the Thera said, when the nation was – and is still considering the ‘ethnic issue’ alone as the ‘national problem’. Of course, at present, the economic issue and attendant social and societal fallouts, may have usurped that unenviable position. But issues such as the societal fallout of drug-abuse might remain even when the economic crisis had passed by.

Incidentally, as far back as 2019, the Catholic Church in the country condemned drug-abuse, but in more general terms, and not confined to the government’s existing idea of legalising cannabis cultivation, beyond the existing levels, which were supposed to be used for medicinal purposes – but not always so. Colombo Archbishop, Malcom Cardinal Ranjith, then issued a pastoral letter in April 2019 urging all parishes and church institutions to denounce drug peddlers. Catholic priests, nuns and the laity took out protest marches and rallies against the increasing abuse of illegal drugs across the country, and seeking government intervention to end it.

Problem of plenty…

A typical argument that can be expected in support of the government’s proposal, from whichever side it comes from, is that controlled production would not hurt the nation, but would only help in securing scarce forex reserves. The question arises how really controlled the promised ‘controlled’ cultivation will be?

If there is hope, how come despite all the seizures of all forms of drugs by the security forces, staring with the police, on land, and the navy mid-sea, have not been able to end drug-peddling, in whichever part of the country you choose?  Clearly, there are breaches, but this one breach, Sri Lanka can do without, so does the forex that cannabis cultivation can bring in.

It is slow poisoning future generations, when the effort should be to save the present one from drowning in the sorrows that the economic crisis has already inflicted upon every home and human – without they asking for it, nor working for it, which was the exclusive preserve of the political class through the past 75 years, if not more. It now seems that they would not give an inch when it comes to the larger good of the society, whatever it be, however it be.

(The writer is a policy analyst & political commentator, based in Chennai, India. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)