The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The National Commission on Marijuana has “really underplayed” the potential economic impact of industrial hemp, an advocate for the drug’s legalisation charged yesterday.

Terry Miller, head of the Bahamas Cannabis Research Institute (BACARI), vehemently disagreed with the commission’s findings by arguing that industrial hemp was “a huge industry that can be developed in The Bahamas”.

The commission asserted that global trends meant “an explosion of products into the industrial hemp market” was highly unlikely, both due to the higher start-up costs faced by entrepreneurs in this segment compared to recreational and medical marijuana, and a saturated environment created by the “majority of the world” lifting prohibitions on its use.

However, Mr Miller countered: “My view is that we need to seriously buckle down and look at legislation relating to all aspects of cannabis. Industrial hemp is one that they have really underplayed, which is a huge industry that can be developed in The Bahamas.

“Right now it’s a good time because there are a number of investors that would be interested in setting up manufacturing plants. This can change The Bahamas from a consumer nation to a producer nation in short order.

“Industrial hemp should not be downplayed at all. The potential is so great. Industrial hemp saps more toxins out of the air than any other plant. We can also look at biofuels. There are 50,000 applications for industrial hemp. There are people that also want to do hemp powder and hemp oils, beauty products, animal feed; the variety of products is so vast. The list goes on and on.”

Backing the commission’s finding that proper zoning is required to separate hemp plants from medical marijuana strains due to cross-pollination that would put both crops at risk, Mr Miller said: “There should be proper zoning because the two of them will not mix properly.

“Industrial hemp has virtually no THC, 0.03 percent, so you don’t want cross-pollination with medicinal marijuana or your other use marijuana. So they are virtually separate products, although our laws have been skewed even against industrial hemp, which really made no sense in the beginning.”

Further asserting that earlier policy towards hemp and cannabis was “not thought through”, Mr Miller added: “The United States said do this and we followed, and there was no thought to why we were doing that.

“While we are at this point we are about to change all of that,” he continued, “and we need to look seriously at industrial hemp, medical marijuana and adult use one time. But also, when we are talking about each of them, the most important consideration prior to legislation is the establishment of standards. Standards for this industry.

“We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. A lot of work has already been done. A book has already been done on standards, and it has been put out by a group called FOCUS. It’s on the Internet and available, and we can use that book. From that it can be a basis of how we develop our own standards.”

Mr Miller urged the government to “stop being followers. We have to expand our minds beyond the little box we have put ourselves in after all of these years. We need to be imagining the possibilities and stop saying ‘we can’t do’ and say ‘yes, we can do’.”

He warned, though, of the pitfalls of creating a “free-for-all” in approving medicinal marijuana. “Again, when we talk about medicinal marijuana, one of the things that concern me is that I think it was almost saying there should be a free-for-all when it comes to medical marijuana,” Mr Miller said.

“We have to be careful with medical marijuana, and I think we have to think about not being a consumer nation, but a supplier nation. Let’s not think about how much we can import. Let’s think about how much we can produce and what we can produce.

“Initially we should be looking at importing, because there are people in this country that need this help today. Again, we are talking about standards. From a simple study of 100 CBD products, 50 percent of the products had less than one percent of CBD, but they have been marketed as CBD oil. We have to be very careful of that, and we have to be strict.”