Staff Reporter
Zimbabwe Industrial Hemp Trust founder and Chief Executive Officer, Doctor Zorodzai Tanaka Maroveke yesterday commended President Mnangagwa for legalising the production of Industrial and Medicinal Hemps.
Speaking to this publication, Doctor Maroveke said that despite the negative attitude or conservative approach by most governments, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Government has decided to listen to calls by investors to legalise Hemp both industrially and medicinally.
“When I first approached our current President, he was still Minister of justice and he listened to me because I had a legal issue that I wanted to be addressed. I was fortunate that when President Mnangagwa came into office with the Second Republic, he had institutional memory. Since then, Zimbabwe has witnessed fast gaits in legalising Hemp both industrially and medicinally,” said Dr Maroveke.
Doctor Maroveke added that through consultations with government, laws regulating farming and processing of Hemp/Cannabis have been revised to create a workable relationship between government and stakeholders.
“When Hemp was first legalised, one of the conditions was that farming was only to be done on State Security land. Although we understood this conservative approach by government, it also had its backlash effect in that we witnessed investor exodus. We engaged government which was again keen to listen to us; this resulted in adjustments to the Hemp laws and currently farmers can now grow their crop on independent facilities but should have a reputable and reliable company for security,” said Dr Maroveke
Although the Second Republic has since legalised industrial and medicinal Hemp, this stance has attracted too much criticism from the public. Doctor Maroveke, however, reiterated that people need to be educated that Government did not legalise Hemp/Cannabis for recreational (smoking or religious) reasons.
Meanwhile, it has not yet been scientifically proven but developed countries like China and the United States of America (USA) have been using Hemp to cure diseases like constipation, high cholesterol, eczema and arthritis. Industry has also used this crop to make garments for clothes and paper.
