BEFORE YOU START COUNTING THAT GANJA MONEY:here’s Something To Think About.

There’s great excite­ment sur­round­ing the pos­si­ble decrim­i­nal­iza­tion and poten­tial legal­iza­tion of (Cannabis Sativa) Popularly know as Marijuana or Ganja. This sense of eupho­ria is not con­fined to my native Jamaica where feel­ings are run­ning high but in sev­er­al American states as well. In Jamaica, mar­i­jua­na users are in prover­bial sev­enth heav­en at the prospect of being able to smoke to their heart’s con­tent with­out hav­ing to wor­ry about (baby­lon) the police. For their part, some European coun­tries had long eased restric­tions on cannabis use, the Netherlands read­i­ly comes to mind. Colorado and Washington states in the pacif­ic north west of the United States, have moved to legal­ize the use of cannabis, although they have done so under the cov­er of (for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es). Of course the American Federal Government has not done any­thing to sug­gest that it will be mov­ing to decrim­i­nal­ize the use and sale of Cannabis Sativa. In fact as I said in a pre­vi­ous blog ‚the Obama Administration con­tin­ue to deport peo­ple , includ­ing Jamaicans from the United States for the sale of marijuana.

As a child grow­ing up in Jamaica I had mar­i­jua­na tea, I nev­er smoked the weed. My fam­i­ly mem­bers were local farm­ers who plant­ed it among hills of yams for their per­son­al use. One cousin actu­al­ly went to prison for 18 months for plant­i­ng it. Later I joined the Police depart­ment and it was my sworn duty to enforce the laws, includ­ing that of cannabis use, sale and cul­ti­va­tion. I just nev­er went out of my way to make crim­i­nals of any­one who used it. In fact there were a few times that I turned a blind eye to amounts of the weed that would have sent the own­er to prison for long peri­ods of time. I am nei­ther proud of it nei­ther am I ashamed that I did. Yesterday I hint­ed in a dis­cus­sion forum that no one expect­ed brains under the fog of cannabis smoke to be objec­tive par­tic­i­pants in this nec­es­sary dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing legal­iza­tion. That leaves the rest of us who are dis­in­ter­est­ed par­ties, to think through the haze and the smoke from those blaz­ing away with euphor­ic aban­don. Despite the pas­sion­ate zeal of sup­port­ers, it bears look­ing at what poten­tial neg­a­tives may occur from legalization/​decriminalization in Jamaica ! American states tak­ing steps to ease restric­tions have sol­id infra­struc­tur­al sup­port in place to deal with poten­tial fall­out if any.

US Justice Department not­ed that juris­dic­tions that had enact­ed laws legal­iz­ing mar­i­jua­na in some form, imple­ment­ed strong reg­u­la­to­ry and enforce­ment sys­tems to con­trol cul­ti­va­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion and pos­ses­sion, and which are in com­pli­ance with such laws, “are less like­ly to threat­en the fed­er­al pri­or­i­ties of enforc­ing the fed­er­al law”. Jamaica can­not say the same . How then can a small nation like ours, which is strug­gling might­i­ly with myr­i­ad issues of crime , child delinquency,unemployment, gang activ­i­ties, drug addic­tion and pover­ty to name a few, not be cautious?

Does any­one, mind uncloud­ed by mar­i­jua­na smoke, unclut­tered by unre­al­is­tic dreams of excess amounts of gan­ja dol­lars, real­ly believe Jamaica’s prob­lems will not be exac­er­bat­ed if this issue is not looked at care­ful­ly? Where is the evi­dence which shows legal­iza­tion will be a panacea to the coun­try’s finan­cial woes? Was Alumina, Coffee, Sugar-cane, Banana,Cocoa , or even Tourism that sil­ver bul­let? Experts have warned that despite poten­tial pos­i­tives of mar­i­jua­na, it is still an addic­tive gate-way drug which leads to addic­tion to more potent drugs. How do we square this with hun­dreds of thou­sands of our young school-age chil­dren legal­ly puff­ing away on their way to school, while in school or on their way from school? How do we deal with the health effects? And last­ly, have any­one both­ered to think of the effects this will have with free flow­ing weed and the guns com­ing in? Of course not ! Everyone is cur­rent­ly active­ly engaged in talk­ing about poten­tial tax rev­enue to be had. Some are even talk­ing about Jamaica becom­ing some kind of gan­ja smok­ing Utopian par­adise. I am just con­cerned that we do not wake up from our gan­ja induced slum­ber to find we have a reached a point of no return. Before sup­port­ers start count­ing the wind­fall, whats wrong with look­ing at the poten­tial downside?