From: [c--o--n] at [dsmnet.com] (Carl E. Olsen)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs,alt.drugs,alt.drugs.pot,rec.drugs.cannabis,alt.hemp
Subject: Rastafarians demand right to smoke ganja
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 15:45:50

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- Testing South Africa's new climate
of individual rights with billows or marijuana smoke, some 400 Rastafarians 
marched yesterday to demand legalisation of their so-called "sacred herb."
     Under laws dating from the former apartheid regime, possession of 
marijuana, or the local hashish called dagga, brings multi-year jail sentences 
despite widespread use by both blacks and whites.
     The Rastafarians, a sect that holds the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile 
Selassie sacred and uses marijuana in its rituals, view the laws as limiting 
freedom of religion guaranteed by the constitution that accompanied President 
Nelson Mandela's election last year.
     Hundreds of Rastafarians smoked marijuana at a park yesterday in view of 
police before parading to the provincial legislature with a petition.

* * * * *
     The Jamaica Sunday Gleaner, May 1995.



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