In most parts of Africa, those in the pharmacy and medical fields have to learn botany or they will have problems in practice.  Many people who live in the rural villages in several parts of the southern continent rely on both traditional and conventional medicine when in ill health.

What happens is, a patient will show up in a consulting room already having taken some type of a herbal concoction or potion to take care of the symptoms before getting help at a health facility.  Cannabis  is a typical ingredient for those in pain because most third world patients cannot afford to travel long distances to get to a health facility.  Agapanthus africanus and Clivia miniata are herbal, labor-inducing plants used by women to prepare for child birth. Natives also ripened boils with Datura Stramonium home-made paste. 

For many people who are not familiar with natural cures, or who for some reason have more faith in laboratories and chemicals, these natural cures present danger. In fact having been involved in the health system that relies on  traditional/natural/herbal cures as well as "scientific"cures, I have observed ( and , "No, this is not experience from personal use.") that the likelihood for accidents is almost the same in all of the categories.

For non "scientific"cures, the handlers of the plant understand where to plant the seeds , and at which time of the year. They know whether the plants require moisture or not, shade or sunlight and whether to harvest the crop in the morning, daytime or evening, and so forth. The cures prepared chemically in the laboratories come with familiar restrictions, and ,everything boils down to "Quality Control". 

The propaganda regarding the harmful effects of cannabis portrays the crop as psycho- addictive,( DSM-IV) yet despite these fears and despite cannabis being regarded as one​ of​ the commonly used​ illicit world​ drugs, controlled clinical ​ trials​ for​ cannabis​ use​ disorder have not been reported in litterature for over tens years. This makes you wonder how serious the cannabis "addiction is".

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