Just how healthy does the man leading the charge to get the National Health Insurance Scheme off the ground, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi (pictured above, courtesy the Sowetan) want South Africans to be?  

It’s indisputable that hemp is a superfood and that official Government (and ANC) policy is to uplift rural communities.

So why would the Minister of Health unilaterally make a decision that is so damaging to his own government and party without any consultation either within Government or to the stakeholders affected by it?  

That is a question many people would like answered, never mind whether the ban is rescinded or not.

Whatever comes to pass, the damage wrought so far by the ban, cannot be undone. One of the most glaring absurdities of the Minister’s ban is how he has undermined a long-running, world-first project to develop hemp-based culturally appropriate ‘superfood’ for school feeding schemes – that was funded his own government!

The SAHPRA-licensed Druid’s Garden project, which received backing from the state’s research entity, the CSIR and Gauteng’s Department of Agriculture, has just been dealt a critical blow by the DoH, just as it is coming to fruition.

Druid’s Garden director Cian McClelland told the Cheeba What the Hemp 2.0? webinar last week that the company received a research permit from the Department of Health (DoH) in 2019 to investigate the potential hemp may have as a nutritional foodstuff. 

This was at a time when the 2019 Indigo Wellness Index, shared in the presentation, ranked SA as the unhealthiest country globally with high obesity rates, elevated blood pressure and excessive alcohol consumption.

Druids then entered into a partnership with the CSIR in 2019 to explore hemp as a foodstuff for both humans and animals. After years of product development, the project came up with a porridge-like product called Tsing, based on a traditional Tswana dish.

The results were astounding, said McLelland, with the CSIR reporting that this was “ one of the most nutritional superfoods they had ever seen”.

“We have verified evidence and documentation from the CSIR as to how this is a very beneficial superfood that treats both malnutrition and obesity” said McLelland, but there has been a struggle for regulatory acceptance for years.

“The objective of this product was to get it into school feeding schemes and programmes around the country” said McClelland. “As you know we have this problem where school kids are not getting enough nutrition and here we have a product that can go a long way to helping government solve it”.

He said that it was ironic that the DoH having granted the license to research a product in 2019 was now banning it at a time when it had proved to be succesful beyond expectation and was now ready for market.

McClelland said hemp was not only nutritious and protein-rich, but contained all the right amino acids that were building blocks for brain development and reacted with the human endocannabinoid system to balance the body.

McLelland, on a previous Cheeba webinar had highlighted the issues of poverty in rural areas and the reliance of schools on government feeding schemes, saying authorities urgently needed to revisit the inhibitors that were preventing the use of hemp porridge for kids.

“We are in danger of cultivating a nation of imbeciles unless we give them the proper protein that they need”.

McClelland said he believed the stigma around cannabis was the main reason the Department of Health was so reluctant to engage positively.

“They are not yet confident enough in the fact that people who consume hemp-based products are not going to get high”.

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