IT WOULD have seemed a lot more revolutionary just two years ago but for Jamaica, it is still a welcome whiff of sense. The island’s energy minister, Philip Paulwell, who also leads government business in parliament, has said he will find time this year to decriminalise possession of small amounts of marijuana. At a stroke, the move will cut the number of criminal offences by as many as a million a week. It will also make a Jamaican break somewhat less nervy for ganja-puffing tourists.
Reform proposals have been knocking around for some time: a National Commission on Ganja recommended decriminalisation in 2001. But helped by moves towards legalisation in Uruguay and decriminalisation in the United States, momentum has been growing. A Cannabis Future Growers and Producers Association was launched last month, and a commercial company to support medical marijuana in December.
Selling for less than five dollars an ounce, ganja has a long history in Jamaica, going all the way back to nineteenth-century Indian immigrants. Cultivation and import have been illegal since 1913, but everyone’s granny remembers when the herb was quite...Continue reading
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