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The Ugandan Parliament has approved the Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Bill, 2023, enabling licensed cultivation and use of marijuana and khat for medical purposes. Despite efforts to influence the legislation, the bill aims to curb drug abuse while permitting strictly controlled medical use.

Parliament has passed the Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Bill, 2023 which now allows the licensed farming and use of marijuana strictly for medical use and sets harsh penalties for a multitude of offences related to substances abuse.

The 94-clauses Bill was passed on Tuesday, 22 August 2023 following three grueling sittings in which MPs had lengthy deliberations on its provisions.

If assented to by the President, Clause 1 gives the Bill an immediate enforceability, in what the Chairperson of the Committee on Defense and Internal Affairs, Hon. Wilson Kajwengye, said was the urgency to plug loopholes in the regulation of narcotics and psychotropic substances.

Following the annulment of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Control Act, 2017 by the Constitutional Court, Parliament went back to the drawing board and has now passed the new law, which seeks to allow the cultivation of marijuana and khat strictly for medical and other authorized use, with extreme penalties included like forfeiture of properties and lengthy jail terms and hefty fines for violators.

Speaking to the strict licensing regime, Hon. Kajwengye, also Nyabushozi County MP, said Uganda will join nations intolerant to drug and psychotropic substances abuse.

“The committee posits that all licences and permits to be issued under this Act should centrally be issued by the Ministry responsible for Health since the permission to use narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances is restricted to only medical purposes; the Ministry of Internal Affairs should remain the enforcement arm of the Government,” he said.

Khat, too, will be a controlled substance only cultivated with licence and consumed on medical prescription, should the President grace the Bill with his assent.

“Under a highly controlled legal regime, the international obligations notwithstanding, the two plants (cannabis and Khat should only be allowed for cultivation and usage strictly for medical purposes and research,” said Hon Kajwengye.

A last-ditch effort to save khat from the list of banned substances by MP Asha Kabanda Nalule (NUP, District Woman Representative, Butambala) failed, when Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa put her proposal to the vote, and MPs voted against it.

Unmoved, MP Timothy Batuwa (FDC, Jinja South Division West) reignited the fight to declassify khat from the list of prohibited substances, arguing that the plant, popular with cross-border truck drivers, should be permitted for conformity with East African Community member countries.

“When we were legislating the Local Content Bill, it was returned and the President [Yoweri Museveni] asked us to have an East African Community mindset when legislating; there are people who consume khat and they live with us as refugees, as business community and they consume this product,” he said.

Hon. Batuwa compared khat to tobacco and asked to have it completely legalized.

With this position, he earned the wrath of MP Laura Kanushu (NRM, PWD National), who said she is not eager to have her constituency [of Persons living with disabilities] expanded.

The Attorney General, Hon. Kiryowa Kiwanuka, also agreed.

“Two per cent of the people in Butabika are there for using khat-like stimuli; it would be very sad for us to come back here and say the number has increased to 10 per cent [as a result of this Act],” he said.

Clause 10 of the Bill, if it becomes law, goes big in the protection of children, with life imprisonment awaiting anyone who intoxicates them with drugs and psychotropic substances.

“A medical practitioner, pharmacist, dentist or any other person who supplies or administers a narcotic drug or psychotropic substance to a child where the narcotic drug or psychotropic substance is not required in treatment of a child, commits an offense and is liable, on conviction, to a fine not exceeding fifty thousand currency points or to imprisonment for life or both,” reads Clause 10.

Farmers involved in the cultivation of the prohibited substances will now have to obtain licences from the health ministry, and those who fail to do so will suffer jail, according to the content of clause 11.

Repeated offenders will now suffer jail.

To cure malicious searches and arrests by persons authorized by the Bill, clause 18 puts personal liability on authorized persons who conduct arrests or searches without reasonable cause.

Under clause 7, a pharmacist who prescribes any of the prohibited drugs and substances under the Act will suffer a Shs1 billion fine, 10 years in jail or both.

Under clause 8, medical professionals who, in contravention of their duties under this Act, prescribe and supply the prohibited substances will have their names removed from the registry of professionals.

Efforts by Hon. Kabanda Nalule to have the Police and army personnel also laced into that particular provision failed, with MPs rejecting her proposed amendments.

Hon. Kajwengye commended Deputy Speaker Tayebwa for “your guidance and leadership; I am happy that we have passed a legislation that has a direct bearing on our people.”

Internal Affairs State Minister, Gen. David Muhoozi, was all praise to MPs for enacting the law, saying government’s intention is to have the law ‘serve the ends it set out to achieve.’

Tayebwa asked parents to keep watch over their children, saying only a person who has a victim of drugs and substances abuse in their families will contextualize the pain they have to go through.

“If you have not had an addict in your family, you will not know; I personally have on our family and we go through a lot; it starts in a simple way; we have many colleagues who are dying slowly because their children are suffering from drugs and substances abuse,” he said.