Chester Sam­bra­no

It was Sun­day af­ter­noon and the pun­gent scent of mar­i­jua­na was per­me­at­ing the at­mos­phere of Wood­ford Square, in Port-of-Spain.

The All Man­sions of Rasta­fari (AMOR) was host­ing Cannabis Ap­pre­ci­a­tion Day and cel­e­brat­ed mar­i­jau­na, which was de­crim­i­nalised on De­cem­ber 23 last year.

To ac­com­pa­ny the call to free the herb were vi­su­als of in­di­vid­u­als clean­ing mar­i­jua­na, oth­ers were sell­ing brand­ed t-shirts and re­lat­ed mer­chan­dise.

A few among the small group gath­ered al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take a smoke, ac­tivist Naz­ma Muller was one who lit up her joint while sit­ting on a bench with the Red House in her back­ground.

On the stage the All Man­sion of Rasta­fari con­tin­ued to cham­pi­on the cause for the full le­gal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na but un­til that hap­pens the group has called on the Gov­ern­ment to prop­er­ly de­fine what is meant by a pub­lic place.

The amend­ments to the dan­ger­ous drug law pro­vides for an in­di­vid­ual to be in pos­ses­sion of up to 30 grams of mar­i­jua­na or plant up to four plants at a pri­vate res­i­dents. It al­so made it il­le­gal to smoke the drug in a pub­lic place.

This is the lat­est point of con­tention for the AMOR.

Chair­man of All Man­sions of Rasta­fari Clyde Noel said the prob­lem is the law isn’t ful­ly struc­tured as yet to say what is pub­lic places and we find it is very rude and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al for us.”

Noel added that what is even more dis­heart­en­ing for his group is that fact that “cig­a­rette smok­ing in pub­lic places is for­bid­den but hence you see peo­ple leav­ing their work and com­ing out­side and smok­ing in the streets and dif­fer­ent places, so why not mar­i­jua­na, which is even more bet­ter than cig­a­rette.”

He said when the term pub­lic places is used for mar­i­jua­na use it makes it hard for peo­ple who want to par­take. “We think the law should take a bet­ter look in­to that so that we could have an equal rights and jus­tice,” he said.

The chair­man said he is al­so very con­cerned that more peo­ple could end up be­hind bars be­cause of the de­f­i­n­i­tion of pub­lic places or lack there­of. He al­so called on the po­lice to ex­er­cise dis­cre­tion when treat­ing with mar­i­jua­na smok­ers. “Please of­fi­cers use your con­science and know that free­dom and lib­er­ty be­longs un­to the peo­ple,” he said.

Noel main­tained that there are much more im­por­tant na­tion­al is­sues to treat with “look at the sta­tis­tics for crime for the month of Jan­u­ary which isn’t fin­ished yet and more em­pha­sis is be­ing still placed on po­lice go­ing out look­ing for mar­i­jua­na smok­ers.”

Nev­er­the­less, Noel said they plan to still abide by the law and hoped that their “broth­ers do like­wise.”

He said, “It is not the po­si­tion of the All Man­sions of Rasta­fari to break and law, we are law abid­ing cit­i­zens. We love the cannabis and are al­ways ready to wait with bait­ed an­tic­i­pa­tion for the day that we could get that free­dom.”

On Sat­ur­day, a well-known disc jock­ey post­ed on twit­ter that po­lice sur­round­ed his “bredrin” while at a Car­ni­val fete in south Trinidad and threw his out for hav­ing a “roll on” on his ears. He went on to ques­tion if de­crim­i­nal­iza­tion meant any­thing in this coun­try. “He was not smok­ing it eh! I thought we were al­lowed to have 30 grammes?” He ques­tioned.

On Thurs­day, a San Juan man was ar­rest­ed for dri­ving a mo­tor ve­hi­cle un­der the in­flu­ence of a dan­ger­ous drug name­ly cannabis and ex­pos­ing a child to a dan­ger­ous drug by of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force dur­ing an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise in Laven­tille.

Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers were con­duct­ing a road check ex­er­cise along Pash­ley Street, Laven­tille, be­tween 3 pm and 9 pm on Jan­u­ary 23, when they had cause to stop a Mit­subishi Lancer mo­tor ve­hi­cle with a male dri­ver.

Of­fi­cers ob­served the dri­ver smok­ing a lit cig­a­rette of un­usu­al length and a male child seat­ed in the back­seat of the ve­hi­cle.

The dri­ver, a 39-year-old man of El So­cor­ro Road, San Juan, was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the of­fences of dri­ving a mo­tor ve­hi­cle un­der the in­flu­ence of a dan­ger­ous drug name­ly cannabis and ex­pos­ing a child to a dan­ger­ous drug name­ly cannabis