CHARLES KONG SOO

Busi­ness­man John­ny Soong and chair­man and prin­ci­pal in­vestor of Green La­va Labs, the first com­pa­ny to be­gin le­gal cannabis cul­ti­va­tion in St Vin­cent says T&T can be a ma­jor play­er in the pro­duc­tion and trade of med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Soong said “There is a busi­ness side to it that we should not be left be­hind. There is a sto­ry to be told in terms of the Caribbean brand.

“When you think about mar­i­jua­na, peo­ple think about sun, sea, sand, St Vin­cent, Trinidad and the Caribbean as a whole, all these things can be mar­ket­ed to our ad­van­tage.

“Every is­land has its ad­van­tages, Ja­maica is a brand, when you say Ja­maica, you think Bob Mar­ley, reg­gae, cur­ry goat, peas and rice and mar­i­jua­na.

“Do we want to be left be­hind with a prod­uct that we need to mar­ket to the world? I would say no.”

He said the coun­try can put its own brand on T&T mar­i­jua­na, there were many unique qual­i­ties the coun­try pos­sessed, such as its en­er­gy that can be har­nessed.

Soong said the farm’s name Green La­va came about from St Vin­cent’s rich vol­canic soil that was ex­cel­lent for cul­ti­va­tion and the cannabis world, where the best cannabis was called fire, and they pro­duced fire.

He said Green La­va had a li­cense to grow, ex­tract and ex­port and he would like to see T&T fol­low suit in the near fu­ture.

Soong said the com­pa­ny was al­so in Ja­maica, and hoped that it was a lev­el play­ing field in T&T, and would like to en­ter the mar­ket with its ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence.

He said the farm had a team of in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts, ge­neti­cists and per­son­nel from the US, Cana­da, as well as from St Vin­cent, and the tech­nol­o­gy can be trans­ferred to T&T if and when the laws re­gard­ing the le­gal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na were changed.

H al­so said with the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my, goods should be able to move freely in the re­gion, re­gard­ing mar­i­jua­na, how­ev­er, there were many im­ped­i­ments to trad­ing in this prod­uct be­cause it was very new.

He asked if they could not trade mar­i­jua­na with­in Cari­com, whether they ex­pect­ed to trade it in Eu­rope, the US or Cana­da.

Soong said the po­ten­tial for gen­er­at­ing forex was high, as many dif­fer­ent prod­ucts can be de­rived from mar­i­jua­na, there was the raw form of cannabis, the bud, oil ex­tracts, top­i­cals, tinc­tures, to med­i­cine such as THC (Tetrahy­dro­cannabi­nol) and CBD (Cannabid­i­ol).

He said there was a lib­er­al wave across the globe re­gard­ing cannabis and was hap­py to see Green La­va’s en­try in this are­na.

He men­tioned that the road to­wards de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion was not with­out its ob­sta­cles, and while cannabis could be used recre­ation­al­ly, mea­sures must be put in place for ze­ro tol­er­ance for abuse.

He said the farm al­so had to sat­is­fy the In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics Con­trol Board (IN­CB) and it will be in­ter­est­ing to read the re­views when it made its state­ment on the ac­tions of the in­di­vid­ual mem­ber states, in par­tic­u­lar, Ja­maica, An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos, St Vin­cent and T&T.

Soong said the ju­ry was still out re­gard­ing cor­re­spond­ing bank­ing re­la­tions with the cannabis in­dus­try.

He said as of now the com­pa­ny was not able to trade through the US bank­ing sys­tem.

Re­gard­ing AG Faris Al-Rawi’s lay­ing of two bills in the Low­er House of Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, the Dan­ger­ous Drug Amend­ment Bill 2019 and the Es­tab­lish­ment of the T&T Cannabis Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty 2019, re­gard­ing the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na, Soong said any gov­ern­ment pi­lot­ing this, was very pro­gres­sive in think­ing.