Cannabis users will un­der­stand­ably be on a high this week as days af­ter Gov­ern­ment is sched­uled to host its first pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na, a na­tion­al ral­ly call­ing for the le­gal­i­sa­tion of cannabis will al­so be held.

It is a time they have been wait­ing for.

On Wednes­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi will be host­ing the first pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na which is open to all. The con­sul­ta­tion is sched­uled to take place at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts in Port of Spain at 1 pm.

So far ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 peo­ple have sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to at­tend. Con­sul­ta­tions are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue through­out the coun­try un­til March.

The terms "le­gal­i­sa­tion" and "de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion" are mis­tak­en­ly used in­ter­change­ably when dis­cussing cannabis leg­is­la­tion. How­ev­er, as Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said a few weeks ago, there is a "big dif­fer­ence" be­tween the two.

But what ex­act­ly is the dif­fer­ence?

De­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion

De­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion, which is what Gov­ern­ment is now seek­ing pub­lic con­sen­sus on, is the loos­en­ing of the crim­i­nal penal­ties now im­posed for per­son­al mar­i­jua­na use, even though the man­u­fac­tur­ing and sale of the sub­stance re­main il­le­gal.

In the Dan­ger­ous Drug Act Chap 11:25, cannabis is list­ed in the first sched­ule of dan­ger­ous drugs along with oth­ers in­clud­ing, co­caine and hero­in. There crim­i­nal con­se­quences for any­one found in pos­ses­sion of it.

Ac­cord­ing to cur­rent law, if some­one is found with cannabis in their pos­ses­sion they are guilty of an of­fence and are li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $25,000 and im­pris­on­ment for five years. If con­vict­ed on in­dict­ment in the High Court, they are li­able to a fine of $50,000 and im­pris­on­ment for a term over five years, but not ex­ceed­ing 10 years.

Those penal­ties are the max­i­mum range and are dis­cre­tionary based on the amount of the drug found in one’s pos­ses­sion, along with pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions and oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions the judge or mag­is­trate may con­sid­er on sen­tenc­ing.

In 2013, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie asked whether drug traf­fick­ing and drug con­sump­tion should be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. He said the bur­den placed on the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), Pris­ons Ser­vice and the court would be less­ened if de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion is con­sid­ered.

“The next sug­ges­tion is more con­tro­ver­sial and lies prop­er­ly in the realm of the pol­i­cy mak­ers but I of­fer these ob­ser­va­tions for con­sid­er­a­tion. Af­ter over a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry in the law, nine years of which were spent as a pros­e­cu­tor ac­tive­ly in­volved in drug pros­e­cu­tions and as­set con­fis­ca­tion, I have come to the view that drug traf­fick­ing and drug con­sump­tion should be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly,” Archie said.

“Ad­dic­tion is a dis­ease and is as much a pub­lic health is­sue as it is a crim­i­nal prob­lem. This is not a moral judge­ment al­though one might ob­serve that mar­i­jua­na con­sump­tion prob­a­bly wreaks no more hav­oc than al­co­hol ad­dic­tion, but we pro­vide sup­port for one and pun­ish­ment for the oth­er. The eco­nom­ic and so­cial con­se­quences of in­car­cer­at­ing large num­bers of our youths for pos­ses­sion and/or con­sump­tion of small amounts of drugs are im­mense.”

He added: “More­over, it is now ap­pear­ing that the con­sen­sus about many of the as­sump­tions about the ef­fects of mar­i­jua­na, in par­tic­u­lar, is un­rav­el­ling. So much so that CNN’s Dr San­jay Gup­ta re­cent­ly pub­licly changed his stance on the is­sue. In an econ­o­my where the state is the ma­jor em­ploy­er and a crim­i­nal con­vic­tion is a bar to em­ploy­ment, we may be push­ing mi­nor non-vi­o­lent of­fend­ers in­to crim­i­nal­i­ty when they can be saved.”

“The bur­den on the po­lice and pris­ons and the courts in terms of cost and hu­man re­source will be less­ened if we fo­cus on the scourge of traf­fick­ing, but as long as we have laws on the books we have to en­force them. We must take a long hard look at pol­i­cy in this area.”

De­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion is the av­enue Ja­maica has cho­sen to ap­proach the is­sue of cannabis. On April 15, 2015, amend­ments were made to the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act in Ja­maica, so that pos­ses­sion of two ounces or less of mar­i­jua­na is no longer an of­fence for which one can be ar­rest­ed, charged and have to go to court.

How­ev­er, the po­lice may still is­sue a tick­et to a per­son in pos­ses­sion of two ounces or less of mar­i­jua­na and the per­son has 30 days to pay the fine.

Pos­ses­sion of more than two ounces of mar­i­jua­na re­mains a crim­i­nal of­fence and of­fend­ers can be ar­rest­ed, charged, tried in court and if found guilty, sen­tenced to a fine, im­pris­on­ment or both. The con­vic­tion will al­so be record­ed on that per­son’s crim­i­nal record.

Ja­maica has al­so opened the door for a reg­u­lat­ed sys­tem of cannabis per­mits and li­cens­es, as well as use for med­ical, ther­a­peu­tic and re­li­gious pur­pos­es. Each house­hold is al­lowed to legal­ly cul­ti­vate up to five cannabis plants on its premis­es.

Le­gal­i­sa­tion

Le­gal­i­sa­tion is the re­moval of laws ban­ning pos­ses­sion and per­son­al use of mar­i­jua­na. It al­so al­lows the gov­ern­ment to reg­u­late and tax cannabis use and sales.

Last Oc­to­ber 17, Cana­da be­came the sec­ond coun­try in the world to make cannabis le­gal for both recre­ation­al and med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es. Uruguay was the first coun­try in the world to le­galise cannabis.

Cana­da first le­galised cannabis for med­i­c­i­nal use in 2001 be­fore mov­ing to full le­gal­i­sa­tion last year.

The All Man­sions of Rasta­fari (AMOR), and its chair­man Clyde Noel have called for Gov­ern­ment to le­galise cannabis in­stead of de­crim­i­nal­is­ing it.

"For too long we have been suf­fer­ing for a sim­ple herb," he said.

"In that way we will be more free to do a lot of things which can help the econ­o­my tourism-wise, to re­duce the crime rate and to al­so help cre­ate in­dus­tries."

The re­port of the Cari­com re­gion­al com­mis­sion on mar­i­jua­na has al­so called for cannabis to be de­clas­si­fied as a dan­ger­ous drug or nar­cot­ic, in all leg­is­la­tion and re­clas­si­fied as a con­trolled sub­stance.

The re­port rec­om­mends that Cari­com states act to re­move "pro­hi­bi­tion" sta­tus from cannabis, sub­sti­tut­ing the cur­rent pro­hib­i­tive, crim­i­nal sanc­tioned regime with le­gal and so­cial pol­i­cy that em­pha­sis­es pub­lic health, ed­u­ca­tion, and hu­man rights.

The com­mis­sion rec­om­mend­ed that Cari­com states ei­ther com­plete­ly re­move all pro­hib­i­tive le­gal pro­vi­sions, there­by ren­der­ing cannabis a le­gal sub­stance, which is reg­u­lat­ed on­ly in strict­ly de­fined cir­cum­stances, or as a prepara­to­ry step, the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of cannabis for per­son­al use in pri­vate premis­es and med­ical pur­pos­es.

The Com­mis­sion stat­ed:

"Notwith­stand­ing the endgame, the Com­mis­sion does not be­lieve that to­tal le­gal­i­sa­tion in a ful­ly lib­er­alised regime is a plau­si­ble op­tion at this junc­ture for Cari­com. Yet, the Com­mis­sion is of the view that a too lim­it­ed ap­proach to law re­form, in­clud­ing one that fo­cuss­es on­ly on med­ical mar­i­jua­na, would be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and in­im­i­cal to the goals of Caribbean de­vel­op­ment, as out­lined in the SDGs (Unit­ed Na­tion's Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals) and en­dorsed by Cari­com.

"A bal­anced ap­proach that would meet the main so­cial jus­tice, pub­lic health rights and cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty ob­jec­tives of the re­gion would be a hy­brid or mixed op­tion. This would be an in­cre­men­tal and cau­tious ap­proach to re­mov­ing pro­hi­bi­tion, but not too lit­tle that the goals would be frus­trat­ed, nor too much that Cari­com states are un­able to man­age the im­por­tant reg­u­la­to­ry con­trols that are en­vis­aged. This ap­proach would best suit the de­vel­op­men­tal ob­jec­tives of the re­gion".

On Sun­day AMOR ill be host­ing its sec­ond na­tion­al cannabis ral­ly. It is sched­uled for Skin­ner's Park in San Fer­nan­do start­ing at 1 pm and is a fol­low up to the first na­tion­al cannabis ral­ly held at Wood­ford Square, Port of Spain, last Oc­to­ber, which was well at­tend­ed and in­ci­dent free.

Among the speak­ers are med­ical prac­ti­tion­er Dr An­tho­ny Pot­tinger and crim­i­nol­o­gist Dar­ius Figueira.

As the T&T Gov­ern­ment be­gins the con­ver­sa­tion about the way for­ward with re­gards to cannabis leg­is­la­tion, Dou­glas Gor­don, founder of CanEx Ja­maica Busi­ness Con­fer­ence and Ex­po, called for a close look at the le­gal cannabis in­dus­try.

"We en­cour­age the Gov­ern­ment and mem­bers of the busi­ness, med­ical, ed­u­ca­tion­al and agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ties to look close­ly at the le­gal cannabis in­dus­try. The health ben­e­fits, cost sav­ings, and op­por­tu­ni­ties for eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion are com­pelling and at­tain­able," Gor­don said.

"What­ev­er stig­mas re­main are to be un­der­stood and re­spect­ed, but must be over­come. That process is ac­tu­al­ly fair­ly straight­for­ward be­cause the many pos­i­tives to the in­dus­try are sup­port­ed by ex­ten­sive and ir­refutable da­ta.

"Trinidad and To­ba­go has the cli­mate, cap­i­tal, en­tre­pre­neur­ial ca­pac­i­ty, and ed­u­ca­tion­al tal­ent to re­al­ize very pos­i­tive out­comes from their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the in­dus­try. On top of that the un­quan­tifi­able val­ue of a pop­u­la­tion liv­ing with less pain, less anx­i­ety, bet­ter sleep and a host of oth­er sub­stan­tive med­i­c­i­nal ben­e­fits, not to men­tion a tremen­dous in­crease in the over­all sense of well­ness, un­der­lie the im­por­tance of fa­cil­i­tat­ing a le­gal in­dus­try and par­tic­i­pat­ing in what is shap­ing up to be a sub­stan­tive glob­al op­por­tu­ni­ty," he said.

" This in­dus­try has been mov­ing quick­ly and that speed will con­tin­ue to ac­cel­er­ate as more coun­tries join Cana­da and Uruguay along with the host of na­tions (in­clud­ing Mex­i­co) that are now es­tab­lish­ing le­gal adult-use in­dus­tries. Giv­en its nat­ur­al tal­ents, I tru­ly be­lieve that there re­mains a com­pelling eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty for the coun­try and stand ful­ly pre­pared to lever­age my ex­pe­ri­ence and re­la­tion­ships sup­port the le­gal­iza­tion process in any way pos­si­ble," Gor­don said.

Dis­sent­ing voic­es

While many voic­es have come out in favour of changes to cannabis laws, there are those who still be­lieve it has ad­verse ef­fects.

Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist pas­tor Clive Dot­tin has spo­ken out against de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na say­ing he has seen first hand its ad­verse ef­fect, in­clud­ing turn­ing "many youths in­to walk­ing and talk­ing zom­bies."

Dot­tin said cannabis has al­so caused im­paired judge­ment, para­noia, loss of con­trol, as well as re­duced testos­terone and dam­age to the tail of the sperm cell.

He has called on the au­thor­i­ties to be care­ful in mov­ing for­ward on the is­sue.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs has called for all per­sons with views on de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion to make their voic­es heard dur­ing the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions.