The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is promis­ing to im­ple­ment a com­pre­hen­sive frame­work to reg­u­late large-scale cul­ti­va­tion, agro-pro­cess­ing, and ex­port of cannabis, which the par­ty says is es­sen­tial to un­lock­ing the in­dus­try’s full eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial.

The promise is part of the par­ty’s roll­out of mi­ni-man­i­festos ahead of the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

The UNC not­ed that al­though the Gov­ern­ment de­crim­i­nalised the pos­ses­sion of small amounts of cannabis in De­cem­ber 2019 and al­lowed the cul­ti­va­tion of up to four plants, there have been no le­gal dis­pen­saries and no con­sis­tent mon­i­tor­ing of the qual­i­ty or ori­gin of sup­ply.

The UNC said in place of le­gal dis­pen­saries, peo­ple are in­stead buy­ing on street cor­ners from drug push­ers.

The par­ty notes that the glob­al cannabis mar­ket is pro­ject­ed to ex­ceed US$100 bil­lion by 2030, with de­mand span­ning med­ical cannabis, oils and ed­i­bles.

“For Trinidad and To­ba­go, this rep­re­sents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to po­si­tion cannabis/hemp as an agri­cul­tur­al prod­uct akin to sug­ar­cane or co­coa—where small farm­ers can par­tic­i­pate along­side larg­er en­ti­ties in cul­ti­va­tion or agro-pro­cess­ing,” the par­ty said.

The UNC said de­spite de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion, sev­er­al road­blocks ex­ist, in­clud­ing an in­com­plete reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, ex­port lim­i­ta­tions and an un­der­de­vel­oped agro-pro­cess­ing sec­tor.

The par­ty promis­es to pro­vide in­cen­tives and train­ing pro­grammes for small farm­ers in­ter­est­ed in cul­ti­vat­ing com­mer­cial cannabis and fa­cil­i­tate co­op­er­a­tives where small farm­ers can pool re­sources to ac­cess agro-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties or sell crops to larg­er en­ti­ties.

The UNC al­so in­tends to de­vel­op part­ner­ships with Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) lead­ers to har­monise stan­dards for med­ical cannabis ex­ports and po­si­tion T&T as a key sup­pli­er of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal-grade cannabis prod­ucts in de­vel­oped mar­kets.

“The cannabis in­dus­try will cre­ate jobs across the cul­ti­va­tion, pro­cess­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and ex­port sec­tors. Small farm­ers will be em­pow­ered to par­tic­i­pate in this sec­tor along­side larg­er en­ti­ties. Trinidad will join re­gion­al lead­ers like Ja­maica in cap­i­tal­is­ing on in­ter­na­tion­al de­mand for cannabis prod­ucts,” the doc­u­ment said.

The UNC has not yet un­veiled a full man­i­festo and has cho­sen in­stead to pub­lish mi­ni doc­u­ments out­lin­ing promis­es re­lat­ed to spe­cif­ic sec­tors.