His name and where on the island he grows his crops isn't important, though it could easily be the same as yours or mine and he could live and work a stone's throw away from almost anyone there. What's most important about him and the hundreds, if not thousands, like him in Jamaica today, is that the government body studying the decriminalisation/legalisation of ganja realise that this man and the decent people around him have been exploited all their lives because of bad-written laws and the stigma that comes with criminality.

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Last August, the San Jose Mercury News reported that Nicaraguan dealers connected to the CIAbacked contra rebels has sold tons of cocaine in Los Angeles' street gangs during the mid1980s, sparking an explosive controversy over CIA links to drug lords. The product of a year's work by investigative reporter Gary Webb, the threepart "Dark Alliance" series stated that one contraconnected dealer was "the Johnny Appleseed of crack in California"the man who introduced cheap crack cocaine to the poor black neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles.

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