The next sector for international trade - cannabis

The Guardian tells us of how aged grandmothers, trying to bring up their AIDs orphaned grandchildren, illegally grow marijuana in the mountains of Swaziland:

In Nhlangano, in the south of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), the illegal farming of the mountainous kingdom’s famous “Swazi gold” is a risk many grandmothers are ready to take.

In what is known locally as the “gardens of Eden”, a generation of grandparents are growing cannabis, many of them sole carers for some of the many children orphaned by the HIV/Aids epidemic that gripped southern Africa.

The plots of marijuana are tucked away in forests in the mountains. Around one tiny village alone, the Guardian counted 17 fields of cannabis plants.

Noncedo Manguya is the breadwinner for her family of five grandchildren and two other children from her extended family, who were left in her care after the death of their parents. Manguya, 59, struggled to find a job or start a business and makes money by illegally growing marijuana, or dagga, that she sells on to dealers in South Africa.

This sounds like the sort of thing we ought to encourage. Not, we hasten to add, that we encourage there to be more orphans, or impoverished grandmothers who must break the law to feed them. Rather, the international trade which will make all of us better off.

We in the rich countries are finally - much too slowly but finally - getting sensible about cannabis. Both in the sense that we do own our own bodies and thus do, righteously, decide what goes into them and also in the more practical sense that prohibition simply doesn’t work. So, in fits and starts, medical, recreational, decriminalisation, legalisation, we’re changing the rules. But the one part that isn’t being changed is to allow international trade. Or at least that sensible policy is lagging domestic.

This is straight Ricardo, comparative advantage, even the laws of one price and all that. For as the UN reports (admittedly, old figures, 2006, 2008 and the like) marijuana herb is $40 in Swaziland, in not quite next country over, Malawi, it’s $10. In the UK from $5 to $15.

Except those Southern Africa prices are per kilogramme, the UK ones per gramme. A thousandfold price difference is the sort of thing international trade is made of. Legalising that would mean higher prices to the farmers, lower to consumers and human utility - not to mention pleasure - increases at both ends. And the region does already provide a significant portion of the global tobacco supply so the at least beginnings of the necessary infrastructure are there. There are also the beginnings of attempts to make this happen too.

We should do more to make this happen properly. Throw ourselves open to international trade here, to our own benefit and that of the producers.

The biggest opponents will be those who already try to grow cannabis in our own less amenable climate. Plus, there seems to be some infestation of the cannabis cheering classes with an anti-trade, anti-big business worldview. We do expect that thousandfold price difference to win out over such opposition, even if only eventually. And lets face it, we’re used to domestic producers being against international trade, aren’t we?

But let’s start right now. Whatever level cannabis consumption is at in any particular jurisdiction make the international production and trade in it subject to exactly the same rules as any domestic. Prices will tumble at our end and grandmothers will feed their orphans better at the other.

Sounds like a plan.