Derek Achong

"We smoke mar­i­jua­na to deal with ex­am stress." This was the ex­pla­na­tion giv­en by four uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents who plead­ed guilty to mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate yes­ter­day. Travis As­gar­ali, 20, a com­put­er sci­ence stu­dent of Sinanan Street, Vista­bel­la; Adriel Ifill, 21, a third-year bi­ol­o­gy stu­dent of San Fer­nan­do; Kyle Ram­lo­gan, 18, a first-year chem­istry stu­dent, al­so of San Fer­nan­do; and Alex Von Ser­ti­ma, 19, a sport tourism stu­dent, of Palmiste, plead­ed guilty in the Port-of-Spain 10th Court be­fore Mag­is­trate Mau­reen Ba­boolal-Gafoor. A fifth stu­dent, Jonathan Bho­la, 18, a first-year elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing stu­dent, of Ni­na Ter­race, Vista­bel­la, who was joint­ly charged with the group, plead­ed not guilty.

The stu­dents at­tend ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions in north Trinidad, in­clud­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine and the T&T Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute, Cha­gara­mas. Af­ter plead­ing guilty they ex­pressed re­morse for their ac­tions and ac­knowl­edged their ar­rests had brought shame on them and their fam­i­lies. When asked by Ba­boolal-Gafoor their rea­sons for smok­ing the il­le­gal drug, they all said they ini­tial­ly used it as a stress re­liev­er but be­came ad­dict­ed due to con­tin­u­al use. The young men, whose par­ents at­tend­ed yes­ter­day's hear­ing, low­ered their heads as the charges were read and promised to nev­er use the drug again.

They al­so ad­mit­ted to Ba­boolal-Gafoor they knew the neg­a­tive side ef­fects of mar­i­jua­na use. Ba­boolal-Gafoor stressed to the stu­dents, what she called the se­ri­ous le­gal im­pli­ca­tions of mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion. She said: "Un­der the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act a per­son guilty of mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion faces a fine of up to $25,000 or up to five years im­pris­on­ment." The stu­dents were rep­re­sent­ed by de­fence at­tor­neys Criston J Williams and Fa­reed Ali, while the mat­ter was pros­e­cut­ed by Sgt Wayne Mo­hommed.

They were ar­rest­ed at 3.30 pm on Mon­day at La Hor­quette Road, Glen­co, while al­leged­ly in pos­ses­sion of 145.9 grammes of mar­i­jua­na, val­ued at more than $1,500. They were held by a team of of­fi­cers from the West­ern Di­vi­sion who were on mo­bile pa­trol in the area. They lat­er were grant­ed $15,000 bail at the Four Roads Po­lice Sta­tion by a Jus­tice of the Peace and re­leased in­to their par­ents' cus­tody. The charges were laid by Cpl Hollingsworth. The mat­ter was ad­journed to next Thurs­day when the stu­dents are ex­pect­ed to be sen­tenced by Ba­boolal-Gafoor.