People before unnuh tink mi Maad

[Sir X]

I am on vacation with nothing else to do but post ,enjoy it while you can , and H.L is right ,i am not into the ganja business like him except to promote it ,like a dance ,i believe all should be invited,thats my role.As for some who believe i am at the forefront of destroying whats left of jamaican society ,ask yourself if ganja legalisation is going to destroy whats left ,then the politicians dont need to legalise it ,keep it illegal -criminalise-garrisonise ,The politicians can achieve it in another 20 years,maybe sooner,and the screwed up thing is ganja will still get the blame.

Science wi a deal wid.

[Assasin]

I have not commented much on this Ganja debate but first let me say, my grandmother who delivered and grew many children, never left her "ganja rubup" and a little herb tea from time to time.

90 percent of the kids she grew never became smokers. I have know people who spoke a spiff from time to time over 60 years without a problem.

I have seen however too many people string out on herb. They think there is a race to who can smoke the most herb. I remember even chatting to Bredda Sam Clayton (Orignal Rasta from Mystic Revelation) and he expressed the same concern for someone we knew mutually. Also some youngsters mixed this thing with other drugs and that is no joke.

I also understand in places like Cali, just about anyone can drive up and get a medical prescription to smoke herb. I hear there are even touts outside the clinics.

In no way I support a man getting a police record for a spliff. Economically I think if it legalise we may not benefit as much as we think because there is going to be a lot of "indoor" planting and a lot of gov. land etc in many states but maybe I could be proven wrong.

For me it is a touch subject as while we can't criminalize people for a spliff, and use it for medical purposes, let us know that some people can't manage it and smoking too much over short period of time can affect anyone. These are factors that should be considered in any Ganja laws, and how are we as a nation going to benefit truly from this product. An example is making a define brand rather than sending the raw material overseas, which is what we are good at doing with our products and others benefit from the mark up on the end product.

[Sir X]

Cant lose,liscene anyone who grows it ,anyone without a liscene gets a hefty fine.Glad for the human touch about grandma,we stygmatise it to put our culture to shame , as per its harm look at the science and not colonial or obeah propoganda.

Nothing to fear in my opinion, we need jobs to allieveate unemployment which is the main reason for its use , being unemployed leads to depression because of idleness ,Deacon Thwaites spoke on it in the Chevannes report...he said when youths found employment most left the ganja smoking behind.

[Assasin]

Why you think if it is legalize we will have so much jobs? there is a lot of government land out west US with herb plant on them. If you know anything about US weed, most of it coming from places like Arizona. A lot of weed is also grown indoors. If is legalized I can only see this happening more. The price is going to be less and controlled by major brands.

Just like how we have Blue Mountain Coffee, Best Ginger, Cocoa, and other products which carry premium price on the world market and we don't make use of it, just like how we give our banana, bauxite, sugar and all our raw material without making end products, what is going to change here?

I don't see any movement currently to let me think different. I hope I am wrong but for all I know Jamaicans might be soon smoking Cali herb cigarettes as a status symbol.

[Sir X]

The versatility of the herb and thats whats missing ,Jamaicans like Historian and K.D are fixated on the casual use of ganja i.e smoking as H.L and other MDs have explained your medicinal value from it that needs to be exploited and thats on two fronts the herbal cultural aspect and the clinician aspect.Then you have the industrial where building materials are made out of hemp e.g hemp concrete in france ,plus other materials where the chinese corner the market ,incidentally Obama singed off on hemp production last week in the farm bill.

I cant see how we dont make money even if controlled by the big man , the industrail use is vast ,we neded to find our niche in that field.The ecological use ,its friendly on the land ,a small carbon foot porint.I read somewhere they used it to buffer marshes/swampland against hurricanes or storms.

Too many uses for us not to make money,we are fixated on the leisurely, casaul use ,which can be marketed to the tourist but come on the industrial and clinical hemp is where the real money is in my opinion.

Even if controlled by the bigman,people have to work that land for the volume to be used.

There is money saved from legalisation,criminalisation has a huge financial cost to put anyone in the penal system,that alone will save millions.

How can we lose ?

[Assasin]

How can we lose ?

These are the kind of question we need to ask ourselves.

How did we lose off Blue Mountain Coffee, ginger, Cocoa etc? We produced premium qualities

[Sir X]

Just keep thinking versaltility and the cost of crimminalisation,the rest is commonsense and science.

Your and MY Granny get it.

[Assasin]

I am not saying there is not money to be made but I am asking, are we planning to take advantage or let others take advantage of us.

Time will tell.

[Sir X]

Interesting point ,anything is better than criminalisation which is the current policy at the moment.

My opinion.

[Islandman]

That is one of our fundamental problems. We convince ourselves that having the raw material is half the battle to a successful product when in reality it is like one-tenth the battle, though a necessary one-tenth.

We can have abundance of athletic talent, the sweetest mango, the best flavor coffee, the strongest Herb all we want from now till eternity. Until someone turns that into a productive and profitable industry it will not benefit us much economically. Then we will cuss those who copy and run wid it.

Was watching a Bunny Rugs interview last week, he said when Jamaican reggae bands started going to Japan in the 80s, they were more interested in how the artistes played the instruments than anything else. Eventually JapanSplash would draw more than a hundred thousand with hardly a Jamaican artiste in the lineup.