Paul Kirk
A controversial medication that is a form of legalised dagga has been withdrawn from the market, avoiding a court battle that would have challenged the illegality of dagga in South Africa.
Elevat is the trade name for medication that contains the active ingredient dronabinol. Hailed as a wonder drug for the alleviation of pain in cancer sufferers and weight loss in Aids and anorexia sufferers, Elevat is nothing more than Delta9 tetrahydracannabinol, the active ingredient in dagga.
Produced by a Johannesburg company, Pharmacare, Elevat was a huge money- spinner, until the manufacturers took the medicine off the market for no apparent reason. Company representative Marie Pelser says this is ”purely a marketing issue”, but says she knows little more.
Industry insiders say the decision was taken to avoid embarrassment for the company. Although production of Elevat was stopped in December last year, many pharmacies still have large supplies of the medicine on their shelves. It sold for R45 to R130 a tablet
Durban advocate Jenny Wild was one of many cancer sufferers given a prescription for Elevat while it was still available. She is also one of the key witnesses against allegedly corrupt Durban policeman Piet Meyer. For nearly 20 years she has studied organised crime and police involvement in the illegal drug trade.
And she has previously been arrested on charges of cocaine possession by Meyer. The charges were dropped after a number of years when senior justice officials came to the conclusion they were nothing more than an attempt to frame the outspoken advocate.
No sooner had the cocaine charges been withdrawn than Wild found herself in trouble with the South African Narcotics Bureau (Sanab) again, this time with regard to Elevat.
When police from the office of the national police commissioner visited Wild in connection with evidence she has of police involvement in drug trafficking they noticed that Wild was growing dagga plants in her garden.
Like many other cancer sufferers Wild had scoffed at the notion of paying the exorbitant price of Elevat to be legally in the possession of dagga. She decided to grow her own dagga plant from which she could make tea.
Sanab was alerted and Wild was arrested and charged with dagga possession.
Last week the KwaZulu-Natal director of public prosecutions declined to prosecute Wild on ”humanitarian grounds”.
Says Wild: ”I fail to understand how it is that I can only have a source of relief from my pain if I spend a great deal of money.
”I think it is immoral that a pharmaceutical giant is allowed to make money, while the justice system prevents [people] from obtaining a cheap and effective form of pain relief.”