It’s morning in Nairobi’s blue-collar districts. Young men and women make their way quietly to the neighborhood pedis house to purchase weed. Posh working-class women and men, young hustlers, mkokoteni pushers, watu wa mjengo, boda-boda taxi operators, office workers, hawkers, and jobless corner youth all disappear into the winding mazes of the ghetto.
In Nairobi, it sometimes seems there are more weed tokers than cigarette smokers — a fact that makes it hard for a foreigner to fathom that smoking weed in Kenya is technically illegal. Later in the day, the police dutifully wend their way through the same maze, collect their “protection fee,” and melt away again into the alleys like civil servants completing a routine administrative task.
Meanwhile, the Rastafarian Association of Kenya has been pursuing a case in the High Court since 2021 to decriminalize and legalize cannabis for religious, medicinal, and spiritual purposes. The court, however, appears to enjoy a leisurely game of cat-and-mouse with the petitioners. Hearings are postponed with admirable consistency. The most recent hearing, scheduled for January this year, was postponed again to March 30 after the Attorney General failed to file a response.
Justice, it seems, travels at the speed of a Nairobi matatu stuck in traffic.
One of the problems Rastafarians face is that the police have perfected the “weed excuse” as a convenient shakedown tactic. Even when someone has no cannabis on them, that minor technicality rarely interrupts the process. Should the unfortunate citizen refuse to pay a bribe — perhaps out of naïve faith in innocence — the officers may escort them to the station, retrieve a sample from the exhibit room, and magically discover it in the suspect’s possession. Naturally, the bribe required for freedom from the police cells then increases to reflect the new “evidence.”
On an ordinary weekend, a thick woody waft of weed drifts across compounds like expensive cologne. In the 1990s, neighbors might have called the police. These days, most simply accept that cannabis is here to stay. In fact, the more corrupt the government becomes, the more weed gets smoked — a kind of grassroots therapy for citizens trying to remain sane in a system that would otherwise drive them mad.
This raises an uncomfortable question: why exactly is weed illegal?
Cannabis has been around for roughly 10,000 years and has long been used for medicine, fiber, food, and ritual. The plant interacts with the human body’s cannabinoid system — a biological network that regulates mood, appetite, pain, and immune responses.
But the real story of prohibition may have less to do with health and more to do with economics.
An acre of hemp can produce as much paper as four acres of trees. In early America, schoolbooks were made from hemp paper until the 1880s. Unfortunately for hemp, newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst owned vast tracts of forest land. Hemp threatened his timber investments and therefore his profits. Hemp paper can be recycled up to eight times, while wood pulp can only be recycled about three times. Trees take decades to grow; hemp matures in four months.
In a world where we are constantly urged to plant trees to mitigate carbon dioxide, one acre of hemp can produce as much oxygen as many acres of forest.
Ironically, in colonial America you could actually be jailed for not growing hemp. Between 1763 and 1769 in Virginia, farmers were required by law to cultivate it. From 1631 to the early 1800s, hemp could even be used to pay taxes. The Founding Fathers grew it, and during the War of 1812 hemp supplies were strategically important because rope and sails for naval ships depended on it.
Before the cotton gin transformed the textile industry, hemp dominated the market. Textiles, linens, bed sheets, clothes, drapes, and curtains were commonly made from it. Hemp fabric is durable enough to be passed down through generations. The word canvas itself comes from the word cannabis. Early jeans were made from hemp fiber. It was also ideal for ropes, shoes, laces, handbags, and hats.
Hemp seeds are nutritionally dense, rich in protein and omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Hemp milk is widely considered a healthy plant-based alternative to dairy.
Hemp seed oil was once widely used in paints and varnishes until the late 1930s. Even early industrial innovators experimented with hemp materials. Henry Ford famously explored plant-based plastics and fuels derived from crops such as hemp. The Model T-Ford car’s body was 10 times tougher than steel while it used hemp ethanol instead of petrol.
The plant’s uses extend further: soaps, cosmetics, and even biodegradable plastics can be made from it. Hemp products are biodegradable and environmentally friendly. Hemp-based building materials such as hempcrete are lightweight, strong, fire-resistant, and excellent for insulation and soundproofing.
Given all these uses, it might seem strange that cannabis became so heavily criminalized during the 20th century.
But economic competition has a way of shaping public policy. Timber, oil, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries all had powerful incentives to discourage a crop that could replace wood pulp, petroleum-based plastics, synthetic textiles, and certain pharmaceuticals.
The alcohol industry also had its concerns. A population quietly relaxing with cannabis might consume less beer, and nothing terrifies a profitable industry more than a relaxed consumer.
So the humble plant found itself recast from miracle crop to dangerous narcotic almost overnight.
Today, the irony is obvious. Cannabis is widely used despite prohibition. Police collect informal taxes from its trade, courts postpone hearings about it, and politicians avoid the subject altogether.
Meanwhile, Kenya struggles with unemployment, rising living costs, and the search for new agricultural industries.
If legalized and regulated, hemp farming alone could create thousands of jobs in textiles, construction materials, medicine, cosmetics, and renewable fuels.
Yet the case filed by the Rastafarian Association of Kenya continues to drift through the legal system, postponed again and again.
And so the country waits — while the smoke quietly rises above the rooftops of Nairobi’s neighborhoods, carrying with it the faint scent of a plant that may be illegal on paper but has already been accepted by society.