Ganja stakeholders to step up campaign

[Sir X]

Ganja stakeholders to step up campaign
BY BALFORD HENRY Observer senior reporter balfordh@jamaicaobserver.com

Sunday, January 19, 2014

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Chairman of the Ganja Law Reform Coalition (GLRC) Paul Chang (left) listens attentively to a discussion involving (from 2nd left) – Professor Archibald McDonald, principal of the UWI, Mona Campus; Courtney Betty, advocate and attorney; and Professor Rupert Lewis, political scientist — prior to the start of yesterday’s Cannabis Stakeholders Conference at the UWI, Mona. (PHOTO: ASTON SPAULDING)

CANNABIS stakeholders yesterday expressed the need for a more aggressive campaign to push Parliament to move further and faster towards legalising the growing, distribution and use of ganja (cannabis, marijuana) in Jamaica.

Ganja Law Reform Coalition (GLRC) chairman Paul Chang felt that a more robust campaign and show of support would encourage parliamentarians favourable to fundamental changes to legislation affecting the use of the drug, and suggested the need for a young parliamentarian to step up and take the lead, with strong public support, including street demonstrations from stakeholders, including the GLRC.

"We need a young MP to break the party ranks and put forward proposals for more meaningful legislations than the half steps that they are taking," Chang told the opening session of the Cannabis Stakeholders Conference, held in the multifunctional room of the main library of the University of the West Indies (UWI) at Mona.

Obviously shrugging off commitments by Minister of Justice, Senator Mark Golding that Cabinet has been considering amendments that could lead to automatic expungement of ganja sentences, as well as Government MP Raymond Pryce's successful resolution to decriminalise the possession of small portions of the drug, Chang said he is hoping that increased agitation would show a groundswell of support for more substantial changes, and lead to a conscience vote in Parliament. But he insisted that it required young MPs being more forceful inside Gordon House.

"Government only works when you make them work," commented Louis Moyston, lecturer and researcher, who was the main speaker at the opening session.

"I am saying to them (Government), we are going to inform you about what is taking place; we are going to inform you about the potential; and we would like you to work with us, so we can achieve a better future," he stated.

Dr K'adamawe K'nIfe, strategic planning and entrepreneurship specialist in the Department of Management Studies at the UWI, noted that Jamaica spends over $100 million each year fighting ganja use, while some 2,000 youth are being annually for smoking it.

He suggested a more formal approach to the programming of the use of ganja in the future, which would examine its role in the agriculture sector, its bio-diversity and the development of business models.

Moyston also examined the "Historical Background of Cannabis in Jamaica", noting that historical incidents, like the 1938 labour riots, were attributed to ganja smoking, and since then more severe penalties introduced, leading up to the 1970s when some were relaxed, including mandatory sentences, while in the 1980s Edward Seaga confronted the US on the issue and relaxed enforcement.

Yesterday's conference was the latest development in an attempt by advocates of the legalisation of ganja to force the government to take quick action, to follow nations like Uruguay and US states like Colorado, to legalise use of the drug for both medicinal and recreational purposes. It was organised by the GLRC, the Cannabis Commercial and Medicinal Research Task Force, and the National Alliance for the Legalisation of Ganja.

The forum examined a range of issues touching on the legalisation of ganja and was to weigh in on the options, in light of global developments. Its decisions will be published in a communiqué and position paper. However, the media were only allowed into the opening session, which lasted approximately one hour, under the chairmanship of Professor Archibald McDonald, principal of the UWI, Mona.

A position paper, developed by a Cannabis Commercial and Medicinal Research Task Force, led by Delano Seiveright, was also discussed. The paper outlined the products and business opportunities that could be developed from a cannabis industry, including food, personal care, wellness, beauty, clothing, travel and leisure, spirituality, construction-paper fibres, seed oils, essential oils, seed nut, leaf, whole-plant, charcoal, environmental-soil rehabilitation, spas, restaurants, coffee houses, shops, guest houses and clinics.

Among the guests were Wanda James of the Cannabis Global Initiative, a renowned advocate based in Colorado, and her husband, Scott Durrah, who is also a renowned leader in the US movement.

[Sir X]

http://glrcjamaica.org/

[Sir X]

51 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE AND WHAT?



Written by Delano Seiveright

"The conditions existing today have not sprung up overnight, but they have been left to grow worse till the situation is now acute ... . What Jamaica needs now is practical and sympathetic men interested in the country and not charlatans and self-seekers making long speeches about nothing ... ." ( Alexander Bustamante, 1938)

Those words, spoken by national hero and one of Jamaica's Independence founding fathers, Sir Alexander Bustamante, ring with as much effect now as it did 75 years ago when he spoke them. Sir Alexander would probably be in a state of shock to see the ramshackle and brutal state in which the very same people whose lives he battled hard to improve exist today.

We have developed a culture of mediocrity, and just maybe an innate ability to get anything done, while making long speeches about nothing. In the 1960s, under the leadership of Prime Ministers Sir Alexander Bustamante, Donald Sangster, Hugh Shearer and then Finance and Planning Minister Edward Seaga, downtown Kingston's waterfront, in collaboration with the private sector, was in the midst of a very well-planned development.

The plan covered the development of a financial centre, a series of multi-storey office buildings and apartments, a convention hotel, and recreational areas to make downtown Kingston into a modern metropolis with a magnificent skyline, putting it in league with some other small and mid-size cities the world over.

Some progress was made. However, the reckless socialist experiments of the 1970s Michael Manley-led administration and the resulting social and economic decay put a sturdy spoke in that wheel. Telecommunications giant Digicel's move under the Golding administration to quickly establish its multi-storey corporate headquarters on the waterfront, heralded a needed renaissance. Nevertheless, downtown Kingston's waterfront is just a very small fraction of what it could have been.

Fast-forward to 1992, when the eminent Professor Rex Nettleford chaired a special government-appointed Committee of Advisers on Government Structure. A comprehensive report was submitted proposing that the size of the Cabinet be cut to 11 core functions and that a new structure of government seek to maximise the benefits of interaction between the State, private sector and civil society.

More than 20 years on, in the midst of an economic and fiscal crisis and years of anaemic economic growth, the Cabinet numbers, a whopping 20, the largest in more than 30 years. Incidentally, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller was a member of the Cabinet in 1992.

Now inching along to the mid-1990s, former prime minister and then opposition leader Edward Seaga proposed a major development project named the Fort Augusta Freeport Development Plan, taking in the strategic development of 250 acres. Herein lies a very well-conceptualised and pragmatic development plan that has the ability to bring significant sums of foreign exchange into our cash-strapped nation while employing thousands.

As stated by Mr Seaga in a column months ago, "It requires an expansion of the Kingston Container Terminal and Freeport to accommodate mega ships currently being developed, for which the Panama Canal is now being widened. The development would provide more berths, creating additional pier accommodation, including access to the Port Royal archaeological park.

"It would also include assembly manufacturing, Internet technology, hotel accommodation, a free port area for shopping and a cultural park for cultural presentations."

Seventeen years after Mr Seaga's brilliant proposal, and now with the Panama Canal entering the final stages of expansion, government after government has spoken ad nauseam with little in the way of substantive success. Jamaica is again being left behind.

At the turn of the century, then Prime Minister P.J. Patterson established the National Commission on Ganja chaired by the late Professor Barry Chevannes. The final report, which was quite comprehensive, recommended the decriminalisation of ganja in small quantities for private use by adults. Hardly any progress has happened since, as government after government simply dragged its feet on the issue.

The only glimmer of hope occurred under the previous administration which moved to send persons arrested for about eight ounces of the weed to the petty sessions court for adjudication.

Beyond that, in the United States of America just last year, we saw where voters in the states of Colorado and Washington voted for the legalisation of ganja for recreational use in small quantities. In Washington state today, if you are 21 and older, one can possess up to an ounce of ganja for personal use, among other variations for cakes, buns and teas.

Illinois, America's fifth-most populous state, which includes the US's third-most populous city, Chicago, this month became the 20th state to legalise medical ganja use.

Internationally, the same is true in countries stretching from Europe to the Americas. In the last several days, Uruguay's House of Representatives approved a bill to legalise and regulate the production, distribution and sale of marijuana. Recreational ganja users will no longer face time in jail and or suffer the misfortune of having a criminal record.

Opposition Senator Tom Tavares-Finson shocked the nation when he last summer pointed out that at the Resident Magistrate Court in Half-Way-Tree alone, approximately 300 young Jamaican males receive criminal records for small quantities of ganja on a weekly basis. A criminal record, as we all know, serves as a major impediment on upward mobility, and to getting visas.

GET JAMAICA MOVING

For a nation renowned worldwide for ganja, which is primarily attributable to our rich and unique Rastafarian influences, it is a crying shame that we continue to dawdle on an obviously absurd and unjust legal framework.

The cultural issues aside, from an economic standpoint, the country is in a very strong position to attract thousands more tourists to our shores, develop new industries, create jobs, all while collecting millions in new revenues.

In the state of Washington, ganja legally sold from state-licensed stores will be taxed at a rate of 25 per cent, with experts already predicting a windfall of hundreds of millions of US dollars in new revenue for the State yearly.

Twelve years after the National Commission on Ganja report was submitted, Senator Angela Brown Burke several weeks ago in the Senate boldly called for the decriminalisation of cannabis for medicinal reasons. Days after, Mr Raymond Pryce, member of parliament, called for a debate on the decriminalisation of ganja as well as a prescribed legal limit for possession.

Senator Brown Burke, in her presentation, noted, "There are other states and other countries that are way advanced than we are because they have taken that bold step to step forward." The senator, who is also the mayor of Kingston, and inarguably the most powerful vice-president of the ruling PNP, deserves as much support as she can get. The same is true for Mr Pryce, known to be particularly close to Prime Minister Simpson Miller.

Former Government Senator Dennis Meadows and Member of Parliament Mike Henry have been vocal on the matter, with very little action from the previous administration. In any event, Senator Brown Burke's and Mr Pryce's statements may very well represent a strong signal that the administration has an inclination to unlock the massive and positive impact that decriminalization will have from cultural, social, judicial and economic standpoints.

I hope that their bold positions will be furthered with the alacrity that is required. Let's tax, regulate, control and educate on ganja. We have wasted enough time already. Let's think big and get our country moving again.
http://glrcjamaica.org/?q=node/133

[Sir X]

Where are the human rights org ..JFJ etc.

300 young Jamaican males receive criminal records for small quantities of ganja on a weekly basis. A criminal record

Think you stop 300, how many of that are brutalised ending in death in some cases ?

[Rockman]

Certainly establishes that right and wrong are interchangeable ,and who defines it.
I said it before and I will say it again.
We are to be proud of Rasta,time has proven them right.Elimibating meat consumption,preferring natural remedies opposed to pharmaceutical medicines,embracing weed,being weary of baldheads...

[Rockman]

In plain sight and never hiding.
Rasta,Dr Lowe etc dare to defy......

[Sir X]

100 % .Eco tourism is big business, they label them lazy,crazy and uneducated. Smartest man dem when it come to the nature ,soil and herbs

[Rockman]

Sad when we realized just how wrong dem know more dan we people were.The golden model of past generations,and today's genetically linked.

[Sir X]

Obama: Marijuana not "more dangerous" than alcohol

A medical marijuana advocate who goes by the name The Holy Hemptress holds a sign as she demonstrates outside of the W Hotel where U.S. President Barack Obama was holding a fundraiser on October 25, 2011, in San Francisco, California. Hundreds of protesters from a wide variety of activist groups staged protests outside of the W Hotel where President Obama was holding a $7,500 per person fundraiser.  JUSTIN SULLIVAN, GETTY IMAGES

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President Obama waded into the controversial politics of marijuana in an interview published Sunday, saying he’s not convinced pot is “more dangerous than alcohol” and arguing it’s “important” to allow recent legalization efforts in Colorado and Washington State to proceed.

“As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life,” the president told the New Yorker’s David Remnick. “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”

The president even argued marijuana is less dangerous “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”

Still, “It’s not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy,” he added.

The president also said he’s troubled by racial disparities in the application of marijuana laws.

“Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do,” he explained. “And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.”

Mr. Obama ascribed some element of hypocrisy to lawmakers who’ve stiffened penalties against pot use despite some probable experimentation of their own.

“We should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing,” the president said.




Play VIDEO
Recreational marijuana shops open across Colorado
Mr. Obama seemed to welcome recent efforts to legalize the drug for recreational use in Washington and Colorado “because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished.”
Despite the fact that marijuana use is still illegal under federal law, the government announced in August last year that it would not halt the legalization efforts then underway in those two states – part of an effort to re-prioritize drug enforcement resources.

In the interview, the president also lent credence to opponents of legalization, however, saying advocates of full legalization have likely overstated their case by framing the change as a “panacea” for many social ills.

And he nodded at the “slippery slope” argument commonly voiced by foes of more permissive drug laws, wondering where the line will eventually be drawn.

“When it comes to harder drugs, the harm done to the user is profound and the social costs are profound,” he said. “And you do start getting into some difficult line-drawing issues. If marijuana is fully legalized and at some point folks say, ‘Well, we can come up with a negotiated dose of cocaine that we can show is not any more harmful than vodka,’ are we open to that? If somebody says, ‘We’ve got a finely calibrated dose of meth, it isn’t going to kill you or rot your teeth,’ are we O.K. with that?”

© 2014 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-ma...-than-alcohol/

[Mosiah]

So true!

Dem did say Rasta is the healing of the nation, or sumpten lakka dat.