Joshua Sur­tees

Dr Ralph Gon­salves, Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, has de­scribed T&T Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie as be­ing "on tar­get" with his views on the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na in small quan­ti­ties and be­lieves Caribbean peo­ple are ready for a change in the law.

At a meet­ing in Port-of-Spain on Sep­tem­ber 17 host­ed by PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar which al­so in­clud­ed Hait­ian Pres­i­dent Michael Martel­ly, Bar­ba­dos leader Fre­un­del Stu­art and Cari­com sec­re­tary gen­er­al Ir­win LaRoque, Gon­salves asked for the mat­ter to be put down for dis­cus­sion by Cari­com.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Gon­salves said med­ical mar­i­jua­na was now an "ir­re­sistible" top­ic to dis­cuss and sug­gest­ed that as a se­nior po­lit­i­cal fig­ure in the re­gion, now in his 45th year in pol­i­tics and serv­ing his third con­sec­u­tive term in of­fice, it fell to fig­ures like him to open up the de­bate.

"We should be talk­ing hon­est­ly and open­ly, but we are not. It's as though our minds are closed and some af­flic­tion has de­scend­ed up­on us pre­vent­ing us from talk­ing about it. Some­body needs to bell the cat, let the truth out. With my years I can be em­phat­ic about it."

Last week, sev­er­al news­pa­pers in the re­gion, in­clud­ing the Ja­maica Ob­serv­er, pub­lished Gon­salves' com­ments about mar­i­jua­na for med­ical pur­pos­es, point­ing to its use­ful­ness in treat­ing arthri­tis, asth­ma and glau­co­ma.

Last week he re­it­er­at­ed his view, say­ing, "High peo­ple in high places with arthri­tis boil gan­ja and drink it. They boil the root for asth­ma. An old la­dy I have known for many years who be­longed to the Le­gion of Mary, as holy as the Pope–she used to drink it.

"It's not rein­vent­ing the wheel," he went on to say. "Twen­ty states in the US have le­galised it med­ical­ly with no in­ter­fer­ence from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment."

The sys­tem im­ple­ment­ed by states such as Cal­i­for­nia–where cards are is­sued by med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers and pa­tients can buy high-grade mar­i­jua­na from li­censed clin­ics–might be more dif­fi­cult to im­ple­ment in coun­tries like T&T or St Vin­cent.

But Gon­salves ar­gued that it should be man­age­able to im­ple­ment the nec­es­sary adap­ta­tions to the re­gion's le­gal and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sys­tems.

More im­por­tant­ly, he said, Archie had tak­en the is­sue fur­ther by ad­vo­cat­ing de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of pos­ses­sion of small amounts for non-med­ical pur­pos­es al­so. Archie be­lieves pros­e­cut­ing in­di­vid­u­als for mi­nor non-vi­o­lent of­fences, par­tic­u­lar­ly weed pos­ses­sion, is breed­ing crim­i­nal­i­ty and wast­ing vi­tal po­lice re­sources.

This is an opin­ion shared by a po­lice in­spec­tor from the West­ern Di­vi­sion (who pre­ferred to re­main un­named), when he spoke to the T&T Guardian in the wake of the po­lice op­er­a­tion that led to a shootout and the death of a man in Diego Mar­tin two weeks ago. Six hun­dred ki­los of mar­i­jua­na were re­cov­ered in that op­er­a­tion on the North Post Road. The in­spec­tor said one of his of­fi­cers could have died in the shootout and the death of the sus­pect was a waste of life.

Gon­salves said, broad­ly speak­ing, the Caribbean re­gion con­sid­ers any­thing be­low 14 grams (half an ounce) of mar­i­jua­na to be for per­son­al use, while any­thing above that amount in­di­cates in­tent to sup­ply. The cur­rent sys­tem, he said, al­lowed ar­bi­trary abuse by po­lice, some of whom might charge a pos­ses­sor for lit­tle amounts while oth­er of­fi­cers wouldn't.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, he said, mar­i­jua­na was per­mis­si­ble un­der the British in T&T when in­den­tured In­di­an labour­ers smoked it. Mar­i­jua­na, not an in­dige­nous Caribbean plant, ar­rived from In­dia dur­ing British colo­nial rule and thrived in the trop­i­cal con­di­tions here. Much of the re­gion's sup­ply comes from St Vin­cent, Ja­maica and Colom­bia.

Asked whether it could con­sti­tute an im­por­tant agri­cul­tur­al in­come for St Vin­cent, Gon­salves said of the 96,000 acres of land in his coun­try, 33 per cent is for­est and an­oth­er 40 per cent built on. "That leaves about 20,000 acres of land avail­able for cul­ti­vat­ing any­thing. We need to find a niche. We've thought about co­coa and types of veg­eta­bles. We feel mar­i­jua­na cul­ti­va­tion, like in Cal­i­for­nia, would work."

Bring­ing the con­ver­sa­tion back to the hu­man lev­el, he end­ed by say­ing, "If you find a guy smok­ing a spliff be­hind his grand­moth­er's house, is he do­ing any­thing to harm any­body, ex­cept per­haps him­self? If you are in the bed­room with your wife and be­fore or af­ter mak­ing love you smoke a joint, should that be a crim­i­nal of­fence?"

It was, of course, a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion. His view is clear.

Writ­ing on the British For­eign and Com­mon­wealth Of­fice Web site, UK High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T Arthur Snell gave a brief but de­tailed ex­pla­na­tion of the laws on mar­i­jua­na in Britain and the polic­ing meth­ods used to en­force them. The key points were:

�2 In the UK, mar­i­jua­na is a "Class B" drug, ie il­le­gal.

�2 The max­i­mum penal­ty for sup­ply­ing or pro­duc­ing mar­i­jua­na is 14 years' im­pris­on­ment and/or an un­lim­it­ed fine

�2 The max­i­mum penal­ty for pos­ses­sion is five years' im­pris­on­ment.

�2 Im­pris­on­ment for pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na is very rare.

�2 When some­one is caught for the first time with a small amount of cannabis for per­son­al use the po­lice have the op­tion of us­ing a "cannabis warn­ing": a spo­ken warn­ing giv­en by a po­lice of­fi­cer, ei­ther on the street or at the po­lice sta­tion.

�2 On a sub­se­quent oc­ca­sion some­one pos­sess­ing cannabis may be is­sued with a Penal­ty No­tice for Dis­or­der (PND) and a spot fine of �80.

�2 Some­one is­sued with a PND or a cannabis warn­ing will not have this record­ed on their crim­i­nal record.

�2 Andy Hay­man, deputy com­mis­sion­er of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Po­lice in Lon­don, said of the pol­i­cy: "Peo­ple caught with small amounts of cannabis for per­son­al use will not be ar­rest­ed un­less they are un­der age. You will be chal­lenged, be­cause to have pos­ses­sion of that drug is il­le­gal. But the guid­ance [says] fo­cus on class A [drugs such as hero­in and crack co­caine]."

�2 In March 2012, the Econ­o­mist de­clared, "Cannabis has in ef­fect been de­crim­i­nalised in Britain."

�2 In April a group called Lon­don Cannabis Club or­gan­ised a pro-le­gal­i­sa­tion ral­ly at which hun­dreds were al­leged to have smoked mar­i­jua­na open­ly in Hyde Park, Lon­don.

�2 Ac­cord­ing to the Eu­ro­pean Mon­i­tor­ing Cen­tre for Drugs and Drug Ad­dic­tion, the pro­por­tion of peo­ple who ad­mit to hav­ing used cannabis in Britain has fall­en more quick­ly than in any oth­er Eu­ro­pean coun­try over the past few years.

�2 6.8 per cent of UK adults said they had used cannabis in a 2010, sur­vey, down from 10.9 per cent eight years ear­li­er.

�2 The UK ex­pe­ri­ence ap­pears to be that re­duc­ing the penal­ties has al­so led to re­duc­ing the abuse.