Govt holding back hemp in Guyana

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Guyana’s government on Sunday ruled out legalization of hemp farming, with the country’s Minister of State rationalizing a continued ban over Guyana’s notoriety as a port for drug traffickers.

Hemp legalization is “not huge priority for the government at this point,” Minister Joseph Harmon said: “We have to ensure the way the world sees us is not as a narcotic state, and we have to be very careful about how we are branded and how people see us,” Harmon told Demerara Waves Online News.

Harmon said government will not discourage advocacy for industrial hemp, but “the law has to be… changed in order for there to be permission granted for industrial hemp to be used in this country.”

He said Guyana Hemp Association (GHA) and others promoting the cultivation of industrial hemp should seek advice on how laws have been shaped in other countries and lobby the national assembly for changes

GHA leader Turhane Doerga has said he is confident at least 5,000 jobs could be generated in the first year of hemp growing in Guyana, and earn income five times that per acre of rice.


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