Pubdate: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 Source: Guardian, The (UK) Copyright: 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited Contact: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175 Authors: Tim McDonnell and Aaron Ross Kitwe Page: 33 ZAMBIA'S GREEN GURU SEES POT AS A PATH TO THE PRESIDENCY For decades Zambia has staked its economic fortunes on copper mining, but when voters go to the polls in January to elect a new president at least one candidate will be looking to send that tradition up in smoke. Today Peter Sinkamba is due to announce his candidacy on the Green party ticket to replace the late President Michael Sata, who died on 29 October from an undisclosed illness. Sinkamba, regarded as Zambia's leading environmentalist for his battles against the country's big copper mines, is running on an unlikely platform in this socially conservative nation: legalising marijuana. His plan, announced in April, calls for legalisation of cannabis for medicinal use, which would be a first in Africa. The surplus crop would be exported, earning Zambia what Sinkamba says could amount to billions of dollars. At stake is an opportunity to diversify Zambia's economy while beginning to clean up the environmental degradation left by intensive opencast mining. Copper has long been Zambia's national treasure, having fired the country to middle-income status in the 1960s and 70s. By the late 1990s tumbling copper prices sent the mining income to its lowest levels since independence from the UK in 1964. Mining has since rebounded. In 2012 copper exports amounted to $6.3bn (UKP4bn), or nearly 70% of Zambia's total export market. But local communities suffer from environmental impacts such as toxic sulphur dioxide emissions from refineries. In an interview with the Guardian in his hometown of Kitwe, the Copper belt's largest city, Sinkamba said his marijuana proposal would wean Zambia off its addiction to mining by prioritising its fledgling agricultural sector. "Historically, we've been the kind of people that have consumed a lot of marijuana," said Sinkamba. "It is massively cultivated across the whole country [for the black market] ... so what we're saying is, look, let's come out of it and legalise it." Sinkamba reckonsr Zambia could capture up t to 10% of a global marijuana marketm estimated at $140bn by the UN in 2005 which would mak make it more lucrative than copper mining. Earlier this year the Green party claimed mar marijuana exports would bo boost GDP by over 68% by 2021. Experts on the international drug trade, however, caution that Sinkamba's scheme may be half-baked. John Collins, a drug policy researcher at the London School of Economics, said the export of marijuana for recreational use would fall foul of the 1961 UN single convention on international narcotics control. Nor would marijuana exports necessarily be all that profitable, according to Jon Caulkins, a cannabis expert at Carnegie Mellon University, who pointed out that it would take less than 10,000 acres to grow all the THC (the main constituent in marijuana) consumed in the US. Zambia has about 87.4m arable acres. However, Collins called Sinkamba's plan "entirely doable" if he can take advantage of loopholes that exist in international drug law for medicinal drugs. Israel, for example, last year considered a plan to export medicinal marijuana to the Czech Republic, but shied away out of concern that becoming an international drug dealer would look bad politically. "I think the key for Zambia is that they may view the economic returns from the industry as outweighing political concerns," he said. In any case, Sinkamba is a dark horse in the election. But he insists that his proposal has struck a chord with a disillusioned, and very young, electorate. On the streets of Kitwe, Sinkamba is greeted by young people with cries of "Legalise!". "When we look at the trends, the world is going in the direction of legalising marijuana," said Sinkamba. "But we don't want to be the last ones. We want to be the first ones." - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom