Re­searchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Mona, Ja­maica cam­pus have dis­cov­ered a mar­i­jua­na plant gene that will in­crease fruit yield once in­sert­ed in­to plants.

Speak­ing to me­dia last month at the UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, pro-vice-chan­cel­lor and cam­pus prin­ci­pal of UWI Mona, Prof Archibald Mc­Don­ald ac­knowl­edged the find­ings at UWI's Cam­pus Coun­cil Meet­ing 2016.

"We have dis­cov­ered a new gene which we in­tend to pro­duce com­mer­cial­ly be­cause our plant ge­neti­cist has as­sured me that the val­ue of this gene, if it's in­sert­ed in­to pro­duc­tive plants like fruit trees, it in­creas­es the yield," he said.

UWI Mona prin­ci­pal Pro­fes­sor Archibald Mc­Don­ald and UWI St Au­gus­tine Prin­ci­pal Clement Sankat

Giv­en the decade-long de­bate about mar­i­jua­na us­age with­in Ja­maican so­ci­ety in the past, re­searchers at UWI Mona have since teamed with both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners such as the US-based Citi­va Ja­maica LLC to prove the many ben­e­fits of the cannabis (mar­i­jua­na) plant.

Mc­Don­ald said Mona's cur­rent re­search in­cludes the Char­lotte's Web strain of cannabis which was fea­tured in the three-part CNN doc­u­men­tary, Weed.

The plant gained pop­u­lar­i­ty af­ter it was suc­cess­ful­ly used to treat a US girl, Char­lotte Fi­gi, with Dravet syn­drome, a se­vere form of epilep­sy.

While Mc­Don­ald had not men­tioned how soon this gene would be com­mer­cialised, he in­sist­ed that UWI's biotech­nol­o­gy cen­tres and nat­ur­al prod­uct in­sti­tutes have been re­search­ing herbs for a long time.

Ja­maica was the first Caribbean coun­try to de­crim­i­nalise small amounts of mar­i­jua­na in Feb­ru­ary 2015.

Flash­back April 2015: Re­search fel­low at UWI Mona, Louis Moys­ton and prin­ci­pal of UWI, Pro­fes­sor Archibald Mc­Don­ald, plant Ja­maica's first le­gal cannabis plant in front of the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences' Teach­ing and Re­search Com­plex. Pho­tos cour­tesy Mark Bell from the Ja­maican Ob­serv­er.

In the past, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie has called on the T&T gov­ern­ment to de­crim­i­nalise the use of mar­i­jua­na to ease the back­log of cas­es bur­den­ing the ju­di­cial sys­tem.

?Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie de­liv­ers his ad­dress in the Con­vo­ca­tion Hall, Hall of Jus­tice, dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the 2013-2014 law term where he called for the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na.On the pros of de­crim­i­nal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na, Archie said: "In an econ­o­my where the State is the ma­jor em­ploy­er and a crim­i­nal con­vic­tion is a bar to em­ploy­ment, we may be push­ing mi­nor non-vi­o­lent of­fend­ers in­to crim­i­nal­i­ty when they can be saved."He de­scribed the eco­nom­ic and so­cial con­se­quences of in­car­cer­at­ing peo­ple for pos­ses­sion and con­sump­tion of mar­i­jua­na as im­mense and sug­gest­ed drug treat­ment courts as a vi­able al­ter­na­tive."More­over, it is now ap­pear­ing that the con­sen­sus about many of the as­sump­tions about the ef­fects of mar­i­jua­na in par­tic­u­lar is un­rav­el­ing," he said. Pho­to: Shirley Ba­hadur

Read full here.

For­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Garvin Nicholas, has al­so pub­licly ex­pressed sim­i­lar views in sup­port of the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na.

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(func­tion(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getEle­ments­By­Tag­Name(s)[0]; if (d.getEle­ment­ById(id)) re­turn; js = d.cre­ateEle­ment(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//con­nect.face­book.net/en_GB/sdk.js#xf­bml=1&ver­sion=v2.3"; fjs.par­entN­ode.in­sert­Be­fore(js, fjs);}(doc­u­ment, 'script', 'face­book-jss­dk'));There is now a con­sid­er­able body of ev­i­dence that sug­gests that de­crim­i­nal­iza­tion of drugs leads to safer so­ci­eties! The...Post­ed by Garvin Nicholas on­Wednes­day, 9 March 2016

"There is now a con­sid­er­able body of ev­i­dence that sug­gests that de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of drugs leads to safer so­ci­eties! The time has come for ma­ture and wide­spread dis­cus­sion on this is­sue as one of the key tools in the fight against crime!" he post­ed on his Face­book page.

Speak­ing to the Guardian last Wednes­day, Nicholas ex­plained if mar­i­jua­na was de­crim­i­nalised, there would be a col­lapse of the gang in­dus­try in T&T.

He re­ferred to the high crime rates in Por­tu­gal al­most 14 years ago where sta­tis­tics showed a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion as a re­sult of the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of drugs.

Nicholas not­ed that with the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na, the gov­ern­ment could eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy peo­ple who were ad­dicts, con­trol the qual­i­ty and price of the drug, re­duc­ing the need for theft and get tax­a­tion from mar­i­jua­na users.

As T&T law stands, any per­son found in pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na, ei­ther on their per­son or prop­er­ty, may be li­able to a fine of $25,000 or im­pris­on­ment up to five years on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion at the Mag­is­trates' Court.

WPC Danielle Ashe sorts through mar­i­juan trees which were seized last yer. The val­ue of the drug was es­ti­mat­ed at $500,000.

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If con­vict­ed on in­dict­ment at the High Court, a per­son is li­able to a fine of $50,000 and im­pris­on­ment for a pe­ri­od not ex­ceed­ing ten years.

How­ev­er there ap­pears to be a shift in pub­lic opin­ion re­gard­ing mar­i­jua­na.Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment have com­mis­sioned a re­port to analyse the fi­nan­cial fea­si­bil­i­ty of med­ical mar­i­jua­na for the re­gion. The re­port is ex­pect­ed to be out some­time in 2016.

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, dur­ing her term in of­fice, said she was await­ing the re­sults of the re­port to make a de­ci­sion on the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na. She al­so added that de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion was a mat­ter for the peo­ple to de­cide.

T&T Guardian made nu­mer­ous ef­forts to con­tact At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi for the gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion on mar­i­jua­na de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion, but calls to his phone went unan­swered.?