In a victory for international advocates of both cannabis and basic human rights, the government of Malaysia has announced a reprieve in the case of a medical marijuana provider who was sentenced to be hanged. This news is especially welcome, as it comes as many Southeast Asian nations are moving in the opposite direction \u2014 toward intolerant \u201cdrug war\u201d policies and the aggressive use of the death penalty for drug offenses.<\/p>\n
But the change to Malaysia\u2019s penal code hasn\u2019t happened yet, and it still remains unclear if it will come in time to save the life of the celebrated defendant.<\/p>\n
Malaysia\u2019s cabinet chief Liew Vui Keong\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0on Oct. 10 that his government will seek to abolish the death penalty in the next session of the country\u2019s parliament, which opens this week. This comes two weeks after Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed (at 92, the oldest ruler of any nation on earth) called upon his cabinet to amend the death penalty statutes \u2014 in direct response to the global outcry over the death sentence delivered to cannabis oil producer Muhammad Lukman.<\/p>\n Hopefully, Lukman\u2019s execution will be placed on hold while the legislative change is pending. Nurul Izzah Anwar, a parliamentarian from Mahathir\u2019s ruling coalition, said she would write a letter to the attorney general\u2019s office asking for the sentence to be put aside.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the reports, it looks to be a miscarriage of justice,\u201d she said, according to\u00a0Channel News Asia<\/a>.<\/p>\n The announcement was\u00a0applauded by Amnesty International<\/a>, whose secretary general Kumi Naidoo said, \u201cToday\u2019s announcement is a major step forward for all those who have campaigned for an end to the death penalty in Malaysia. Malaysia must now join the 106 countries who have turned their backs for good on the ultimate cruel, inhumane, degrading punishment \u2014 the world is watching.\u201d<\/p>\n Muhammad Lukman was convicted and sentenced to death by a court in the city of Shah Alam on Aug. 30. He was charged under Malaysia\u2019s unforgiving 1952\u00a0Dangerous Drug Act<\/a>\u00a0for possession 3.01 liters (about 100 fluid ounces) of cannabis oil and 279 grams (about 10 ounces) of compressed cannabis. As\u00a0local media reported<\/a>, he had been arrested at his residence in December 2015 along with his wife, who was then six months pregnant.<\/p>\n Lukman\u2019s attorney argued that he was not involved in any criminal enterprise, but was collaborating with advocacy organizations such as the\u00a0Gerakan Edukasi Ganja Malaysia<\/a>\u00a0(Malaysia Ganja Education Movement) to provide cannabis oil to the ailing. For those who were too poor to pay, it was provided for free \u2014 demonstrating that Lukman\u2019s own operation, dubbed HealTHCare, was not a profit-making entity.<\/p>\n Several of Lukman\u2019s hundreds of patients \u2014 including his mother \u2014 testified in court on his behalf. So did\u00a0Professor Mohammad Aris Mohd Moklas, a neuroscience researcher from\u00a0University Putra Malaysia<\/a>, who presented his recent paper on cannabis and brain function, \u201cDelta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol Induce Neurogenesis and Improve Cognitive Performance of Male Sprague Dawley Rats.\u201d<\/p>\n Lukman\u2019s international supporters launched an online petition at\u00a0Change.org<\/a>\u00a0demanding his freedom. It has so far been signed by nearly 70,000 people.<\/p>\n But there are other such cases pending. Amiruddin Nadarajan Abdullah is on trial in the city of Petaling Jaya for providing cannabis oil to as many as 800 patients,\u00a0Free Malaysia Today<\/a>\u00a0reported in January. Again, many of his patients, including young children and grandparents, came to court in support of Abdullah, known affectionately as Dr. Ganja. If convicted, Abdullah could also face the gallows \u2014 unless the law is changed.<\/p>\n There are currently some 1,200 inmates on death row in Malaysia. Amnesty International is especially\u00a0demanding clemency<\/a>\u00a0for death row inmate Hoo Yew Wah, who was arrested with a small amount of methamphetamine when he was 20 years old.<\/p>\n What would make the Malaysian repeal of the death penalty particularly significant is that it could begin to reverse the regional trend\u00a0is currently heading in a more draconian direction. Southeast Asia has one of the world\u2019s highest execution rates. In nations such as Singapore and Indonesia, even minor drug offenses can result in a death penalty.<\/p>\n A 2011 report by the\u00a0Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network<\/a>,\u00a0\u201cWhen Justice Fails: Thousands Executed in Asia After Unfair Trials,\u201d found that the legal systems in the region often fail to meet international standards, with mandatory death sentences imposed on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. A presumption of guilt and denial of the right to counsel are other factors that contribute to unjust trials and convictions.<\/p>\n In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte\u2019s draconian \u201cdrug war\u201d has resulted in perhaps\u00a020,000 extrajudicial killings<\/a>\u00a0by police and paramilitary forces since he took office two years ago. And his grim example is being emulated by other leaders across South and Southeast Asia. Sri Lanka has\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that it will start hanging drug convicts, with leaders explicitly hoping to \u201creplicate the success\u201d of Duterte\u2019s bloody anti-drug campaign.<\/p>\n UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra\u2019ad Al Hussein in June\u00a0condemned<\/a>\u00a0the government of Bangladesh for the killing of suspected drug offenders by security forces. The High Commissioner was responding to reports that 130 people had been killed in three weeks and thousands arrested after the government proclaimed a \u201czero-tolerance\u201d policy on illegal drugs.<\/p>\n There is even some reason to believe that Malaysia could go beyond mere repeal of the death penalty and actually become the first Southeast Asian nation to legalize medical marijuana. Amid the cabinet meetings to discuss abolishing capital punishment, Natural Resources Minister Xavier Jayakumar\u00a0told reporters<\/a>\u00a0that the idea had been \u201cvery briefly\u201d discussed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s already been done in certain countries, and in certain states in America,\u201d Xavier said. \u201cIf it\u2019s going to be used for medicinal purposes, it can be used. Not for social purposes, for medicinal purposes \u2014 yes, it should be allowed to be used.\u201d<\/p>\n While emphasizing that the\u00a0Health Ministry<\/a>\u00a0would have the final word, Xavier said: \u201cMy own personal view is that if it\u2019s got medicinal value, then it can be a controlled item that can be used by Ministry of Health for prescription purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n As\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a>\u00a0notes, the only other country in the region to have broached this idea is Thailand, where the\u00a0Government Pharmaceutical Organization<\/a>, a unit of its Ministry of Public Health, is trying to persuade the ruling military regime to approve studying cannabis with an eye toward permitting medical use.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, do you think Malaysia should legalize medical marijuana?<\/p>\n The post Malaysia Abolishes the Death Penalty for Cannabis Crimes<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In a victory for international advocates of both cannabis and basic human rights, the government of Malaysia has announced a reprieve in the case of a medical marijuana provider who was sentenced to be hanged. This news is especially welcome, as it comes as many Southeast Asian nations are movingContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,6182,3711,5005,6183,6004,731,81,6184],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29976,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29975\/revisions\/29976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Death Sentence for Compassionate Care<\/h4>\n
Reversing the Regional Trend: South Asia & Cannabis<\/h4>\n
Medical Marijuana for Malaysia?<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Malaysia Abolishes the Death Penalty for Cannabis Crimes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"