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Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Ganja activists in marathon session with AG

Public forums next month

by

Joel Julien
2589 days ago
20180725
  Caribbean Collective for Justice (CCJ) head, Nazma Muller, centre, with Attorney General Faris Al Rawi, left, and Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General  Fitzgerald Hinds following a meeting at AGLA tower at Government Campus Plaza on Richmond Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Caribbean Collective for Justice (CCJ) head, Nazma Muller, centre, with Attorney General Faris Al Rawi, left, and Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General Fitzgerald Hinds following a meeting at AGLA tower at Government Campus Plaza on Richmond Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

The first lo­cal pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the is­sue of the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and pos­si­ble le­gal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na is ex­pect­ed to be held as ear­ly as next month.

This was the key out­come as cannabis ac­tivists met with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs Fitzger­ald Hinds for around two hours yes­ter­day.

Yes­ter­day’s meet­ing was fa­cil­i­tat­ed af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­ceived a pe­ti­tion from Caribbean Col­lec­tive for Jus­tice (CCJ) head Naz­ma Muller which fea­tured 10,000 sig­na­tures call­ing for the le­gal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na.

Muller and her team, in­clud­ing crim­i­nol­o­gist Dar­ius Figueira, CCJ di­rec­tor Denise Carew, Col­in Stephen­son, co-founder of T&T’s first in­cor­po­rat­ed mar­i­jua­na law re­form NGO, C420, and me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Joshua Seemu­n­gal at­tend­ed the meet­ing.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian af­ter the meet­ing, Muller was pleased at the out­come.

“It was a pro­duc­tive meet­ing, we are go­ing to co­op­er­ate and col­lab­o­rate on the con­sul­ta­tion so that the process can move for­ward and so that all stake­hold­ers get a chance to air their views, in­clud­ing the med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty, the drug re­hab peo­ple and the church peo­ple,” Muller said.

Muller called on the pub­lic to come out to the con­sul­ta­tions so that “every­body can have a chance to have their say on a pol­i­cy that is very rad­i­cal”.

She said the group is work­ing on hav­ing the first con­sul­ta­tion in the third week of Au­gust.

“The CCJ is pleased, at least we have brought things on to the front­burn­er. It is now be­ing dealt with as a pri­or­i­ty and we are sat­is­fied with that and we move for­ward in good faith be­cause we want to see T&T progress, we want peace and a re­duc­tion in the crime rate, which we think this will do,” Muller said.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, the Gov­ern­ment had de­nied a re­quest from the Cari­com-ap­point­ed com­mis­sion es­tab­lished to look at the is­sue of the re­form of mar­i­jua­na laws in the re­gion, when they sought to have na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tions on the is­sue here.

Speak­ing af­ter yes­ter­day’s meet­ing, how­ev­er, Al-Rawi said Gov­ern­ment need­ed to have crim­i­nal jus­tice re­form in place be­fore the con­sul­ta­tions could be held here.

“So the place and space to have this dis­cus­sion could not have hap­pened from a gov­ern­men­tal per­spec­tive be­fore that crim­i­nal jus­tice fo­cus was giv­en,” Al-Rawi said.

Al-Rawi said the Gov­ern­ment has spent the last two years fo­cus­ing very heav­i­ly on our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, in­clud­ing a fast-track court. He said the coun­try is now ready for the dis­cus­sion on le­gal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na to take place.

One of the things the CCJ is lob­by­ing for as part of the le­gal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na is recog­ni­tion for Rasta­far­i­ans who use it as a sacra­ment. Muller said the tim­ing of the meet­ing was per­haps di­vine giv­en that it oc­curred the day af­ter 126th birth­day of for­mer Ethiopia Em­per­or Haile Se­lassie I.


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