Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Low­er House Bar­ry Padarath says the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill is aimed at chang­ing cul­ture and sav­ing young peo­ple and will not come in­to ef­fect un­til next year.

“The bill has a procla­ma­tion clause. And the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on this is that the bill will not come in­to ef­fect un­til 2027. There­fore, that gives us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work on sev­er­al of the op­er­a­tional us­es and smoothen out and iron out those is­sues that have been iden­ti­fied as re­lat­ed to the fines and so on.”

Padarath, who spoke with Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, said stud­ies have shown the im­pact of drug abuse on the coun­try’s youth and this leg­is­la­tion is seek­ing to cor­rect that.

“Sta­tis­tics were show­ing us that a lot of our youth were falling prey to vi­o­lent crime, to gangs...And there­fore, see­ing that so many stud­ies have been done about at-risk youth in Trinidad and To­ba­go, you go back to the Sel­wyn Ryan re­port and come all the way up the road. And these re­ports have spo­ken about the dan­gers of some of these ills with­in our so­ci­ety. And there­fore, I’ve been mak­ing the point that se­ri­ous times call for se­ri­ous mea­sures.”

He added that the in­crease in the drink­ing age and gam­bling age was part of the Gov­ern­ment’s man­i­festo.

Padarath said il­lic­it drugs have de­stroyed lives with a rip­pling ef­fect in crime and oth­er so­ci­etal ills. The bill, he said, is just an­oth­er tool that is be­ing utilised in the ar­se­nal in the fight against crime.