Executive Director of the Ghana Ark Foundation, Mrs. Angela Dwamena-Aboagye says the current criminal justice system which allows for drug users and dealers to be given equal jail terms lacks logic.

According to her, the law must allow for a clear distinction to be made between those who use narcotic drugs and those who do business with narcotics, for sanctions to be applied accordingly. Speaking on the Super Morning Show on Joy FM, Wednesday, Mrs. Dwamena-Aboagye pointed out that the current arrangement does not make sense.

"You catch somebody with one 'joint' and put them in [jail] for ten years and then somebody is pushing 50 kilograms [of wee] and you put them in for ten years. It doesn't make sense!"

The women's human rights advocate was reacting to the call for a debate on legalising canabis sativa, otherwise known as marijuana or 'wee'. According to Yaw Akrasi Sarpong, Executive Secretary of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) increasingly, ordinary people do not think that possessing the substance is a crime.

Mr. Sarpong says local consumption is so high people are not really interested in exporting it. He said he is aware companies that Marijuana seeds and extract proerties from them for the production of hair cream. He said thre is therefore a market for the cultivation of the drug.

But Mrs. Dwamena Aboagye says the suggestion made by the NACOB boss lacks concrete facts for a meaningful debate. "We need the numbers. If we say we are large consumers; what does it really mean? Is it true?

"Why do we start going the whole hog...I'm not saying people don't smoke it but before we make it look like half the Ghanaian population is smoking marijuana we should be careful...Numbers matter but what do you do with the numbers?   

"You look at the data, you look at the responses, you look at what people are saying and you try to sensitise and take what will work best for the country...You just don't push a particular line of argument because it looks like everybody is going that particular way.

According to her, the fact that the US has legalised the substance in certain states does not mean Ghana should follow suit because, the determinant facts show a discrepancy.

"Some of them [countries] have been going that way long ago; we [Ghana] are trotting and why should we go the same way?...So [do] you bring human trafficking into the mainstream because we've criminalised it and it's forced underground? Do you decriminalise female genital mutilation because when we criminalised it it's forced underground or 'trokosi' for that matter?

"We are running systems that do not make any sense. We should tackle those ones and then as the debate goes on we know what we can do," she stressed.