The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has an­nounced that the State will ap­proach the High Court on Mon­day to be­gin a process to re­lease the es­ti­mat­ed 100 in­mates who are be­hind bars for pos­ses­sion of small amounts of mar­i­jua­na.

Faris Al-Rawi an­nounced dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at his min­istry in Port-of-Spain this af­ter­noon.

The move comes as the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na is set to take ef­fect from mid­night on Mon­day, De­cem­ber 23, the date that has been set for the pres­i­den­tial procla­ma­tion of the law passed in par­lia­ment ear­li­er this month.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice has hired Fyard Ho­sein S.C. to lead the State's le­gal team in what Faris Al-Rawi calls a "proac­tive" step by the State in the name of so­cial jus­tice.

The in­mates who stand to ben­e­fit from the law were ei­ther al­ready con­vict­ed for pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na or are on re­mand; the group in­cludes in­mates at the Women's Prison and chil­dren who are at re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tres. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al did not want to haz­ard a guess on how long the le­gal process would take but he said the State is mov­ing quick­ly and care­ful­ly to get the in­mates re­leased. Faris Al-Rawi al­so spoke about seek­ing par­lia­men­tary ap­proval for use of 'dru­gal­iz­ers' to give po­lice stan­dard­ised read­ings that can help de­ter­mine if some­one is break­ing the law and dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of mar­i­jua­na.

A pro­cure­ment process would have to be­gin, and un­til those de­vices ar­rive, po­lice will have to use the tra­di­tion­al 'walk the white line test.' Al-Rawi said fixed penal­ty tick­ets are be­ing print­ed at the gov­ern­ment print­ery so po­lice of­fi­cers will have the rel­e­vant pa­per­work from Mon­day.

He said po­lice will "ag­gres­sive­ly ap­ply" the laws that pro­hib­it dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of mar­i­jua­na, use of the drug in the pres­ence of chil­dren and smok­ing in a pub­lic or com­mer­cial space.