Advocates lobbying for cannabis decriminalization organized a series of activities this past week to promote the “Green Sensation” Festival tomorrow, including a march around the Legislative Yuan in the afternoon.
Every year “420 International Weed Day” is marked around the world on April 20, and the Taipei event is to have music entertainment, speeches, display booths and vendors to create a “fun street fair” starting at noontime and running until evening, Green Sensation spokesman Chung Ho-yun (鍾和耘) said yesterday.
Kaohsiung-based rapper Savage M and Taiwanese metalcore band Setback Line are the headliners, with hip hop artists BR and IronBoss, Thaiboy41, Acrack 47 and other entertainers also playing, Chung said, as he called on activists for personal liberty and supporters of medical and recreational use of cannabis to attend the march and activities.
Photo: Jason Pan, Taipei Times
The event has received official approval after submitting an application, which permits the organizers to hold the street fair at the south side of the Legislative Yuan on Jinan Road.
The march will begin at 4:20pm and walk around the whole block before returning back to the street fair, Chung said.
“Taiwan is a free, democratic country, and citizens have the freedom of expression and personal liberty. So we have the right to hold the 420 event each year, to advocate for decriminalization, and for medical use of cannabis, although the authorities and their outdated laws still treat it as a narcotic, instead of a natural medicine as it is,” he added.
Chung said his group and supporters want Taiwan to join the many advanced nations that have decriminalized cannabis, or permit its use for medical purposes or for personal consumption.
These include Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Jamaica, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, South Africa, Australia, Thailand and many US states.
They listed their demands for Taiwan to gradually relax the prohibition on the natural plant cannabis sativa and products derived from it, starting by stopping the stigmatization of personal consumption; to conform to global decriminalization trends by removing it as a Category 2 narcotic drugs; and raise the allowable level at current 10ppm for tetrahydrocannabinol in hemp products to the same level as US at 3,000ppm.
Asked about the prospect for changing the law under the new administration, as president-elect William Lai (賴清德) is to be inaugurated next month, Chung said he hopes to see a reassessment of cannabis and drugs policies, “but we don’t have much hope for change, because the designated new justice minister Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) comes from the same conservative mindset of the Taiwan justice system, and they are rigidly fixed in viewing cannabis as an ‘evil narcotic.’”
Meanwhile, the nation’s “weed lawyer” and Green Party member Zoe Lee (李菁琪) on Sunday convened a discussion with audience members during the Taiwan International Democratic Film Festival in Taipei, after screening the 2018 US documentary film Breaking Habits, a film about Sister Kate and her commune of nuns in California who ran a cannabis farm. The nuns produced medical marijuana to help treat people with cancer and other major illnesses.
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