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Ganja debate gone up in smoke

What has happened to the great CARIBBEAN MARIJUANA-GANJA DEBATE?

Why, after all the excitement occasioned by the forthrightness of Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonslaves, the one who first broached the issue at a regional level, and the subsequent setting up in 2014 of a Regional Commission on Marijuana to examine the social, economic, health and legal issues surrounding its use in the Caribbean, and to determine whether there should be a change in the current classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug, has there been such a deafening silence here and across the region?

The region seemed to have pulled the plug on this bottle of excitement, allowed all the interest to bubble over to the ground, and more literally, has failed to move any closer to a conclusion on this issue than when it sought to make it a CARICOM agenda item in 2014.

Yes, there was much talk – and CARICOM leader after leader lent his/her voice to what now appears to be another hot spot of talk – rather than giving the issue the serious attention it deserved, i.e. working towards a regional policy on marijuana – both on economic and humane /legal grounds.
By way of a reminder, marijuana has not disappeared from our landscape, and will not for a very long time to come, if it does at all.

Marijuana continues to be cultivated in varying degrees right across the CARICOM jurisdiction, with some territories, like Jamaica, accounting for the greater proportion of cultivation and export.
And if the truth be told, little people, small farmers, not large plantation owners or large scale farmers – are the ones who engage on a daily basis in the cultivation, marketing and sale of the herb, and have contributed directly to economic and social development across the region .

To please the regional and international protocols to which we find ourselves subservient as sovereign nations, we destroy some fields of marijuana now and then; we seize quantities of marijuana whether on land or within our waters; we arrest a trader here and there; and we incarcerate thousands of young Caribbean people for being in possession of small quantities of the herb, destroying many lives in the process.

And while we do all that, we (region) sit idly by as the rest of the world turns with heightened expectation on the axis of the potential of perhaps the most exciting industry in the 21st century.

A report by a leading marijuana industry investment and research firm, found legal marijuana sales jumped 17%, to $5.4 billion, in 2015, and they will grow by a whopping 25% this year to reach $6.7 billion in total U.S. sales.

These numbers, though confined to the USA, are simply staggering.
And as though those figures are not already ‘hard to swallow’, consider that ArcView Market Research will release its fourth edition of The State of Legal Marijuana Markets report, and it includes the prediction that the legal marijuana market will see a whopping $21.8 billion in total annual sales by 2020.
Does this not speak to the next wave of investors, business operators and who have you, as finding their feet on solid ground in the marijuana industry – cultivation, research, marketing and sales?
Expect the cannabis industry to continue to gain legitimacy among entrepreneurs and investors in countries we might think have little to do with this herb. The reality is that after a period of ‘wait and see’, the rest of the world is ready to plunge into this mother-lode, on which we have been sitting for decades and seem ready to forfeit to the ‘rich world’ once again.

Why are we at a standstill? On what in Zeus’s name are we waiting?
Is it that there are those in leadership positions across the region who want to ensure that they are cut into the scheme of things before they venture into making the necessary political decisions? Is there the making of a cartel in the region who are angling to become primary suppliers, thereby taking the added value out of the hands/mouths of small, rural folk who have endured through thick and thin to keep the marijuana growing and going?

We hope not. Oh for the want of continued open debate and honesty!



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