FILE: Jamal Bryant, senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, speaks during the “Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks” protest against racism and police brutality, on Aug. 28, 2020, in Washington, DC. /
Recreational cannabis is illegal in Georgia but a pastor there still believes that getting into the weed business could puff up his church’s membership of and get more posteriors in pews.
Jamal Harrison Bryant, senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, reportedly plans to cultivate the plant in a bid to grow the congregation, according to Benzinga.
“I’m looking for people that smell like weed,” Bryant said during a recent appearance on the Cool Soror podcast with Rashan Ali.
Calling the church the largest land-owning, Black church in the U.S., he noted “my position to my deacons is why are we not raising cannabis. I’d be able to bring in Black males. They’re able to do it legally. I’m teaching them farming. I’m helping them to enhance the ecosystem,” he said in a short clip from the podcast.
It is not the first time the triad of cannabis plants, church and congregation size have combined.
Back in the fall of 2021, for-profit church Temple420 offered newbies to the organization a bit of free hemp. Members hoping to partake, however, needed to be in U.S. states where recreational cannabis has been legalized, noted a group statement.
It’s not clear whether or not Bryant — who the church reports has a Bachelor’s Degree from Morehouse College and a Masters of Divinity from Duke University — will be able to convince the authorities that his plant plan is either a good or legal one.
Penalties for possessing weed in the Peach State are strict, with an ounce (28 grams) or less punishable by a year in jail and a US$1,000 ($1,360) fine, per the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). Even a smidge more than that, though, and the misdemeanour charge is transformed to a felony carrying one to 10 years in prison and a US$5,000 ($6,800) fine.
The latter maximum penalty applies if the charge is possession with intent to distribute 4.5 kilograms or less of cannabis, but skyrockets to 30 years imprisonment and a US$100,000 ($136,000) fine if between 4.5 and 907 kg.
While recreational cannabis is off limits, medicinal marijuana is legal in the state, although that involves primarily low-THC oil, according to the GA Access to Medical Marijuana Commission.
Beyond the limited available options, those wanting to use the medicinal oil need to ensure the total amount is 20 fluid ounces (about 590 millilitres) or less, the user is registered with Georgia Department of Public Health and has the card on hand, and the oil is in a pharmaceutical container with a manufacturer’s label indicating the percentage of THC therein.
It’s also possible to grow medical marijuana, but that requires a licence that comes with several fees. Depending on the specific type of production licence, some of those fees are in the thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Growing medical marijuana faces yet another delay
Roll out of the program, however, has faced delays. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in September that medical marijuana production licences for two companies, Botanical Sciences LLC and Trulieve Georgia Inc., had been unanimously approved. State law requires the companies to begin production within a year, breaking an impasse for 24,400 patients and 17,700 caregivers since Georgia authorized medical cannabis in 2015, according to the newspaper.
But a month later, 11Alive reported the medical cannabis production program was stalled again after a court action suspended the state-issued grow licenses to two companies. The ruling means that while medicinal cannabis is legal, it continues to be illegal to buy since no one is producing it instate.
The apparent obstacles, however, seem not to have dampened Bryant’s enthusiasm for cultivating cannabis as both a community-building and membership-attracting venture.
H/T: www.thegrowthop.com
