Bill Clinton memorably took a puff, but did not inhale. A few years later, his fellow Democrat Barack Hussein Obama admitted that in his youth not only did he take a puff from a dagga roll, but he also inhaled.

"I inhaled frequently. That was the point," he said.

Mind you, these were public admissions, therefore suggesting that these personalities had done something wrong by smoking dagga.

However, because these admissions came from these personalities, they sounded rather cool.

Also read: Durban man bust for hydroponic dagga cultivation

Society in general frowns upon weed, and arbiters of moral standards - especially in this country - will tell you that dagga smokers are failures who are destined for two places: jail or an early grave.

The humble herb has received such bad press over the years that it is generally ill-advised to admit familiarity with it. So much so that some people even believe that smoking the herb can drive you crazy.

Also read: Fresh out of rehab HHP defends his use of dagga

Sadly, King Dalindyebo of the Thembu hasn't helped the image of holy herb either. He has made a number of poor judgment calls and all these mistakes have been put at the door of the holy herb.

"You see? This is because he smoked dagga," his detractors will tell you.

Yet the reality is that throughout history, many successful personalities, ranging from William Shakespeare to Bob Marley, from King Shaka to Bill Gates, from former London mayor Boris Johnson to Oprah Winfrey, have come out openly about their relationship with the international herb.

Political commentator and writer Bill Maher memorably said: "Look, I have never made a secret of the fact that I have tried marijuana . about 50000 times."

Locally, I know quite a few influencers - top judges and businessmen of note - who partake of the holy chalice. However, they would never admit in public that they were dagga smokers because of the stigma.

It is therefore heartening that there is a sea-change in international perceptions about dagga. As we speak, Jamaica is in the process of installing dagga kiosks at its airport - so tourists can start using the herb as soon as they touch down.

Many people - and I was one of them for a long time - assumed that dagga was legal in Jamaica. You see, I grew up on reggae music. The cover sleeves of many reggae albums - Peter Tosh's Legalise It, for example - always showed pictures of these artists smoking a joint.

But in reality, dagga was decriminalised in Jamaica only last year.

This in emulation of the United States which raised R80-billion from tax realised from the sale of dagga last year. In Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, dagga was decriminalised decades ago, and has always been sold at café's in this city, just to cite another example. Revenue from dagga is part of their economy.

It's been a long time coming, the decriminalisation of dagga in the US. Last year Obama told CNN: "I'm on record as saying that not only do I think carefully prescribed medical use of marijuana may in fact be appropriate and we should follow the science as opposed to ideology on this issue.

"But I'm also on record as saying that the more we treat some of these issues related to drug abuse from a public health model and not just from an incarceration model, the better off we're going to be." 

Legalisation in the US has given a massive financial boost to Colorado. The herb has also been decriminalised and started raising revenue in Washington state and the District of Columbia. Despite this, and the fact weed has been found by scientists to be 114 less deadly than alcohol, some states in the US are still reluctant to decriminalise it.

Look, I am not a scientist, nor have I done any in-depth research into the causal link between dagga and anti-social behaviour. But even a cursory look at road accident stats will show that alcohol is more of a problem.

Alcohol is also part of a dangerous cocktail that fuels violence in our neighbourhoods. I am not aware of any study that has specifically singled out dagga for the spike of violence in our neighbourhoods, especially over the weekend.

Fortunately for alcohol, it is distilled by powerful people with big money and therefore have a powerful lobby. Not so with dagga.

The Jamaican example should be an inspiration to us. Because we are a more sophisticated economy, we can even do better than them.

We cultivate a lot of dagga, after all, but we do it in secret. Maybe it's also time we formalised and decriminalised it. People will therefore run dagga farms legally, without fear and being at the mercy of crime syndicates currently running the industry.

Just a thought. Puff and pass.

- Send comments to fredkhumalo@post.harvard.edu