'Cannabis Keeps Viral Progression Down'

DIRECTOR of the Caribbean Drug and Alcohol Research Institute Dr Marcus Day believes the time has come for regional governments to legalise marijuana to counteract the spread of HIV.

"I think we should regulate cannabis (marijuana) use the same way we regulate alcohol use, the same way they are talking about regulating it in the states of Washington and Colorado in America," said Day, an HIV/AIDS specialist and coordinator of the Caribbean Harm Reduction Coalition.

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"Penalties against drug use should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against the possession of marijuana in private or personal use." - - President Jimmy Carter, message to Congress, August 2, 1977

I don't know if it has anything to do with the growing number of American states that are voting to decriminalise ganja, but the great ganja debate is surfacing here again.

In April of this year, I successfully infused myself into a conversation two young men were having about the similarities in a recent experience that came to an end in the Half-Way Tree RM Court that day. Both men were jailed when they were found with a ganja spliff. They spent nine days in the jail, pleaded guilty and were charged $100 each. So that should be that. But not really.

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If the years of Prohibition taught the United States nothing else, it should have been that laws for which there is little, or no, popular consensus are not only likely to be treated with disdain, but also breed corruption.

So, during the ban on alcohol, speakeasies flourished and mobsters like Al Capone 'owned' law-enforcement officers and public officials. Dry America was a boon for the Mafia.

Nearly 80 years after the lifting of Prohibition, America is fighting, and losing, another of these battles of morality. Only, this time, the fight has spread far beyond its borders, with deleterious consequences for many of its neighbours, including Jamaica.

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IF JAMAICANS were to be asked to vote whether the use of marijuana should be decriminalised, at least one clergyman would be among those saying aye.

The Reverend Karl Johnson yesterday told The Gleaner that it is time Jamaica move towards decriminalising the use of marijuana.

"I think many of us have long advocated for that in circumstances that would point to marijuana not being used for export," Johnson told The Gleaner yesterday.

His comments come against the background of a Sunday Gleaner article on the weekend in which local parliamentarians have supported a move by two US states, Washington and Colorado, to decriminalise and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21.

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WHILE respecting the rights of individuals to enjoy a safe and healthy environment, this column has been advocating legislative and judicial reforms in the way we treat users of marijuana (ganja) in Jamaica. In fact, this column has been bolder than just advocating common-sense amendments to the present laws that govern the cultivation, distribution and possession of the plant. It has suggested that the production and use of the weed (to qualified adults) be part of any recuperative health tourism plans we might be contemplating.

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If there was anywhere on Earth where it was legal to blaze the chalice, one would think that that place would be Jamaica, popularised by our own legendary ambassadors such as Bob Marley (in singles such as Kaya), Peter Tosh (Legalise It), Yellow Man (Sensemilla), Rita Marley (One Draw, more popularly known as I Wanna Get High) and Buju Banton (Driva).

After the most recent recommendations to decriminalise weed, made by national commissions set up in the late 1990s by the government, namely that of former prime ministers P.J. Patterson and, more recently, Bruce Golding, to study the phenomenon of this herb, it would appear that support is growing in Parliament. Justice Minister Mark Golding and Opposition Senator Tom Tavares-Finson have shown their cards.

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THE EDITOR, Sir:

A few Fridays ago, the issue of the continued criminalisation of ganja usage was raised in the Senate.

According to Senator Tom Tavares-Finson, "On a weekly basis, ... approximately 300 young Jamaican males receive criminal records for minute quantities of ganja. It means that we are creating a pool of young persons who cannot be employed, who cannot join the military, who cannot join the police force and, indeed, cannot, in some instances, seek further education."

What is it about marijuana that makes a lot of politicians hallucinate? The faintest whiff of 'the weed of madness' (according to US government propaganda) causes them to see distorted images of things that aren't there and never were: justice, law and order, community protection, re-election. But most of them don't see the obvious.

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The Gregory Isaacs Foundation launched its anti-drug campaign last October -- celebrating the memorial of the late singer who passed on that day.

Widow June Isaacs says the messages has been playing locally an internationally on radio, television and on the Internet.

Her strategy getting the message across is using comments from her late husband in edited audio and video comments about his own drug abuse.

"The medium of the Internet has taken off like a firestorm with tons of sites commenting and sharing the message and the ad," she says.

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REGGAE star Buju Banton is now being transferred from the Pinellas County Jail in Florida to a correctional facility in Mississippi to begin serving his 10-year sentence.

Banton will be taken to the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi.

Defence attorney David Oscar Markus, who represented the embattled artiste, in his drug trial, told the Sunday Observer that United States magistrate James Moody recommended that Banton serve his sentence at a facility in Florida, but a shortage of beds caused him to be transferred to the Mississippi-based prison.

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THE EDITOR, Sir:

It is not true that international treaties, in particular the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, prohibit governments from pursuing alternative legal schemes regarding the possession or regulation of cannabis as stated in a Gleaner article on January 31 titled 'Ganja to remain under ban in Jamaica because of int'l treaties', in its reporting of a lecture recently at the University of the West Indies, Mona, on the subject.

According to a 2001 British study, governments have "considerable room for manoeuvre under the terms of the three [international] drug-control conventions". These treaties allow for lawmakers to impose administrative sanctions such as "rehabilitation and social reintegration ... [to] be substituted for conviction and penal sanction" in illicit drug cases.

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Dear Editor,

Ganja is illegal, so the police must stop those who peddle and smoke it, especially in full view of the public - at least for now, until and if it is made legal.

This open disregard for the law helps to confuse our children. It tells them that an illegal act can be flaunted and accepted publicly. Commissioner, get tough, please. It may look simple but it will go a far way in changing disrespectful attitudes towards law and order.

I am one of those from the old school who have no doubt that ganja is a harmful, behaviour-changing substance, even if the smokers say they feel "irie". To what end?

Patrick Rowe

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