Source: monstersandcritics.com
Moscow - Russian scientists should breed a non-narcotic strain of the marijuana-producing plant cannabis to stimulate the country's hemp industry and combat drug abuse, a senior law enforcement official said Wednesday.
'We need to develop and cultivate new non-narcotic breeds of cannabis which will allow us to stop importing hemp products ... and help fight drug addiction,' said Viktor Ivanov, the director of the Federal Service for Narcotics Control (FSKN).
Other members of the FSKN controlling committee voted in favour of Ivanov's proposal, which would give the government formal grounds to support the project, the Interfax news agency reported.
Also called hemp, cannabis is a plant whose stalks are commonly used for the manufacture of ropes, paper and fabrics. Portions of its flowers may also be used to produce marijuana.
Russian scientists have already developed 20 hemp strains, which contain 'almost no' traces of marijuana's key narcotic chemical - Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Further research and selective breeding could create a plant useless for marijuana production, and ideal for extensive cultivation by farmers, Ivanov said.
In comments to the Rossiskaya Gazeta newspaper, Ivanov said the government should commit 300 million dollars to the project, which could ultimately create 1 million jobs in the rainy and mountainous Tuva, Maritime and Stavropol provinces.
Gennady Onishchenko, the chief of consumer safety agency Rospotrebnadzor, told Interfax: 'This is definitely a good idea ... its time has come, with genetic modification it is now possible to create non-narcotic hemp.'
But other health experts were sceptical, pointing out that low-THC cannabis plants breed naturally with high-THC plants, which would make it difficult to keep plants in an industrial hemp plantation THC-free over several growing seasons.
'Our estimates were that you could do it for about three years, then you would have to plough the fields under and replant everything,' said Aleksandr Mikhailov, a former FSKN official. 'The 'clean' plants would turn into narcotic ones.'
Evgeny Bryun, the Health Ministry's chief narcotics inspector, said: 'I know of no strain of cannabis that is THC-free. I know people have tried to breed such plants and failed.'
The government led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has embarked on a national development campaign with a main strategy of making unused territories across the country's eight time zones economically productive.
Energy projects particularly in the Arctic, Siberian and Pacific Ocean regions are Moscow's top priority. Machine-building, high-tech and agriculture, particularly in the thinly populated east, also have been designated important sectors.
The Soviet Union was a leading world producer of hemp and its industrial byproducts oil, food, fibres, housing and industrial materials until 1961, when Moscow ratified the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and banned almost all forms of cannabis.
About 1 million hectares of cannabis are thought to be under cultivation in Russia for illegal marijuana production, most of it in the Far East and Black Sea regions. An estimated 2,000 hectares of land are under cultivation with cannabis for legal purposes, according to a RIA Novosti news agency report.
Marijuana is used as a recreational drug among Russia's urban middle classes, and by rural residents who almost always grow the plants themselves for personal use.
In contrast with developed nations, there is little demand in Russia for upmarket marijuana specially crossbred to induce a strong high, with hardcore addicts preferring heroin or other opiates.
There are 2.5 million drug addicts and more than 5.1 million drug users in Russia, according to United Nations data. In a statement in July, Ivanov said that marijuana was a dangerous drug and should stay illegal in Russia.
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