SINGAPORE: The recent decision by the United Nations to remove cannabis from the most tightly controlled category of narcotic drugs is one that is driven by the “power of money”, said Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam on Saturday (Dec 5).
Member states of the UN drug agency had on Wednesday voted 27-25 with one abstention for Recommendation 5.1, which states that cannabis and cannabis resin should be deleted from Schedule IV of the 1961 Convention – a global text governing drug controls.
“I put this down to the power of money. Companies see a huge amount of profit and a very invidious idea that cannabis is not harmful is being pushed,” said Mr Shanmugam.
“But the evidence that it is harmful is quite substantive.”
READ: Singapore ‘disappointed’ with UN move to loosen controls on cannabis: MHA
Mr Shanmugam noted that last year, the medical journal Lancet highlighted that there was a greater risk of psychotic disorder from the abuse of cannabis.
The Surgeon General of the United States also pointed to three negative effects of cannabis, said Mr Shanmugam, including an effect on adolescents’ learning and a decline in IQ.
Singapore’s Institute of Mental Health in 2015 reviewed “all the reputable literature on the subject” and presented it to the UN, he…