USING OUR NATURAL RESOURCES

For a while now high profiled people in Swaziland have been talking about finding use for one of the herbs that is best produced in Swaziland, commonly known as dagga.

I concur with them, we have abundance of the plant and from the looks of things, and people will not stop growing it anytime soon. As economics would have it, when you have an abundance of something you have to take advantage of it. Marijuana can be used for making fibre, medicinal purposes and paper production. One of the products that comes out of marijuana plants is hemp. Hemp is the name of the soft, durable fibre that is cultivated from plants of the Cannabis genus. Hemp is a popular fibre because it is strong and grows quickly; it produces roughly 10 per cent more fibre than cotton or flax when grown on the same land. Some examples of these that we know include sacks, commonly known as emasaka enkhomo, jackets, which are very popular in Europe, shoes and carpets. Medical cannabis is the use of cannabis and its constituent cannabinoids such as THC as a physician recommended form of medicine or herbal therapy.
Although the extent of the medicinal value of cannabis has been disputed, it does have several well-documented beneficial effects. Among these are the amelioration of nausea and vomiting; stimulation of hunger in chemotherapy and AIDS patients, lowered intraocular eye pressure (shown to be effective for treating glaucoma), as well as gastrointestinal illness.

Other studies have shown that cannabis may be useful in treating alcohol abuse, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, collagen-induced arthritis, asthma, atherosclerosis, bipolar disorder, colorectal cancer, depression, dystonia, epilepsy, digestive diseases, gliomas, hepatitis C, Huntington’s disease, leukemia and skin tumors. Hemp has never been used for commercial high-volume paper production due to its relatively high processing cost. Currently there is a small niche market for hemp pulp, for example as cigarette paper. These are just a few of the examples of things that marijuana could be used for.  I believe that if government could start talking to some of the drug companies, the Swazi nation would benefit.
This could be another way of fighting the illegal use of this plant within our country. Marijuana growers would have to sell to the producers of hemp and medicine, instead of selling to other users.

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