A city businessman claiming to be a biochemist has petitioned Parliament to allow him use make food additives from bhang.
Simon Mwaura says bhang can be highly nutritious once the elements that make people high are removed.
He said he turned to the August House’s Health Committee after his request was turned down by all agencies he had applied to for permission.
“What remains can be blended with tea, beer and spirits, and doesn’t have psychotropic effects,” Mwaura told the Health Committee according to the Star.
Mwaura is the proprietor of Nairobi-based firm Hyraquip.
He told the committee that the plant which is a declared illegal drug in the country should be grown in military barracks, national parks or in controlled farms by licensed individuals.
Mwaura further offered to buy a kilogramme of the drug at Sh10, 000, explaining that a farmer who grows it in a one-acre piece of land will make Sh1 million in just one season.
“The pilot programme, if granted, will involve 150,000 licensed growers only allowed to grow in a maximum of one acre each,” said he.
His first request was trashed by the Ministry of Agriculture in 2014 when he sought for gazettement of a notice declaring bhang and miraa special crops. He hoped to start a pilot programme across the country.
On behalf of the Agriculture Principal Secretary, Johnson Irungu said the ministry cannot advice on food additives and referred Mwaura to Kenya Bureau of Standards and the Public Health department to determine whether bhang has beneficial nutritional properties as he purported.
Pharmacy and Poisons Board registrar Kipkerich Koskei in April 2014 rejected Mwaura’s application stating marijuana and its products remained prohibited in Kenya.
“There’re other legal sources of the extracts you want to produce and the Health ministry would advise you use the other sources in your intended production,” Koskei said.
Seme MP James Nyikal asked the businessman to subject his assertions to a scientific analysis for credibility.
“When we have an indication something works, we want to quickly market it as food supplement because we don’t want to isolate the active compounds,” Nyikal noted.