Posted on the Walrus

At the end of last year, I traveled into the rural Wakiso district in Uganda with a team of police officers, to watch them destroy several acres of marijuana. The plants were slashed with machetes, put in three-metre high piles, and then set on fire.

In this lush rural area, plants and vines and trees form practically impenetrable walls of green. Marijuana grows easily, and sells for about ten times as much s the same quantity of a starchy staple called cassava. Police officers estimate that about three-fourths of Wakiso residents grow marijuana, and just about everybody smokes it. Though this most recent spurt of activity has destroyed a couple of hundred acres, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimate there are still tens of thousands of acres of cannabis growing in Uganda.

Police alternate between calling it “enjaga,” the name in Luganda, and opium. I point out the opium is actually a different drug made from poppies, and an officer nods, points to a towering stalk of marijuana and says, “Yes, opium.”

The officers I accompanied explained to me that the only way to reverse the ill effects of marijuana is to drink milk. And that it can purify your intentions. Or help you accomplish your goals. But can also make you kill someone. And that’s it’s best smuggled to the UK in cabbage leaves.

The Ugandan police have identified destroying “opium” as a key element in fighting crime. Uganda is a heavily policed nation, and since most police officers are former military, it’s also a heavily militarized nation. Fear and rumor replace information. And in a rural area like Wakiso, cash crops like marijuana are the only way for a peasant farmer to even hope that his kids will go to school and maybe not have to grow a marijuana to be able to afford things like mosquito nets and clean water.

As we left the site in Wakiso, the groggy officers realized they forgot to bring back any “evidence.” One of them hopped out of the truck and ran to collect a branch the size of a Christmas tree. I commented that perhaps not everything had burned, since this was still around.

“You can’t eliminate it, you can just reduce it,” said the officer, who had clearly not even tried to eliminate it in one area. He also brought back an idler – a village resident who had said the police weren’t doing anything useful. On the floor of the truck, the officer placed his machete, the huge branch of weed, and the idler, who the officer announced would be tried by a court of law for his insolence. There’s about a five-year backlog in the court system in Uganda.

Perhaps police headquarters failed to consider that they are destroying a livelihood in addition to fighting crime. Perhaps police headquarters also failed to consider that burning acres of marijuana could potentially get the rural officers very, very high.