Frontline India doesn’t sound impressed..
Poor monitoring, existing drug problems, and the State’s inability to control THC levels in hemp can turn legal cultivation into public health crisis.
In the first week of September, the Himachal Pradesh Assembly adopted the report of a government-constituted committee and passed a resolution legalising cannabis cultivation. The government believes that this will be an economic game changer for the State, and curiously, both the ruling Congress and the BJP-led opposition are on the same page on the issue.
It was in April 2023 that the State government constituted a committee for the legalisation of cannabis cultivation, under the chairmanship of Jagat Singh Negi, Minister for Revenue, Horticulture and Tribal Development, to examine legalising the cultivation of cannabis/hemp (excluding charas) for medicinal, scientific, and industrial purposes under Sections 10 and 14 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, along with Rule 29 of the Himachal Pradesh, NDPS Rules.
According to the Negi committee report, a copy of which is with Frontline, the committee studied the practices of controlled cultivation of cannabis for non-narcotic purposes in Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
