SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) chair­man David Lee says the call by In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dhanayshar Ma­habir to le­galise med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na is not an is­sue for the Op­po­si­tion at this time. How­ev­er, he says if the Gov­ern­ment is se­ri­ous about pur­su­ing the mat­ter, there should be pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions to gauge the feed­back from stake­hold­ers and pos­si­bly a ref­er­en­dum on it.

Lee was giv­ing his views on whether the UNC would sup­port le­gal­is­ing med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na, one day af­ter Ma­habir threw it out yet again in the Sen­ate as an op­tion for treat­ing pa­tients with var­i­ous dis­eases and ill­ness­es. In putting for­ward his case on Tues­day, Ma­habir said the use of such drugs can al­so rake in bil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue and help di­ver­si­fy T&T’s econ­o­my. This was Ma­habir’s sec­ond call for the drug to be le­galised. His first call came in March dur­ing an­oth­er sit­ting.

Yes­ter­day, Lee said the per­son­al views of Ma­habir had not come up any­where in the Par­lia­ment frame­work.

“It is not some­thing we cau­cused about. It has not come up at cau­cus and no one has raised it at the Par­lia­men­tary lev­el. The Gov­ern­ment of the day has not raised it on its leg­isla­tive agen­da, so it is not an is­sue for us at this point in time.”

Asked if the UNC’s na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive had dis­cussed the mat­ter, Lee said no.

“We re­al­ly don’t have a view on the is­sue that Dhanayshar has raised. It is not a con­cern for us at this point in time. That is a whole leg­is­la­tion is­sue.”

Asked if there was a pro­vi­sion in the Dan­ger­ous Drug Act to al­low the le­gal­i­sa­tion of med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na if the ma­jor­i­ty of the coun­try called for it, Lee said this was be­yond his purview.

“I can’t say.”

He said while a lot of states in the USA have le­galised med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na, “in my per­son­al view, I don’t know what are the long-term so­cial con­se­quences of some­thing like that. It is some­thing one has to be very cau­tious about in pro­ceed­ing in that fash­ion.”

He said not be­cause some states in the US had gone this route, T&T should should do like­wise.

“That is some­thing that needs prop­er con­sul­ta­tion with the peo­ple. It should have pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion. If the Gov­ern­ment feels strong about it and wants the views of the peo­ple they can do it. It is not some­thing we sup­port or do not sup­port.”

Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh mean­while said le­gal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na was not a sim­ple mat­ter.

“We know there are med­ical ben­e­fits to it. I think a na­tion­al ref­er­en­dum is the way to go with this. We have al­ways said so. We have to lis­ten to the voice of the peo­ple. Let the peo­ple de­cide.”

Gopeesingh said one al­so need­ed to look at the lon­gi­tu­di­nal re­search stud­ies to de­ter­mine the in­tri­ca­cies in­volved in med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na.