THE MINISTRY of Health is to be sued over ganja laws, the country’s first incorporated Cannabis Law Reform Non-governmental Organisation (NGO) has said.

According to a release from Colin Stephenson, the director and co-founder of C420, “under current law in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the possession, import, export, sale, manufacture, production, cultivation or distribution of cannabis is legal as long as one has been issued a licence”.

Stephenson said C420 is ”in possession of a legal opinion from the Ministry of Health confirming the same”.

“In light of this, C420 has made several applications for medicinal cannabis licences on behalf of individuals who feel cannabis will be effective as a treatment for their illnesses,” Stephenson said.

SAN JUAN – Marijuana is the most-used drug among convicted and accused criminals in seven Caribbean countries, according to a new study from Jamaica’s National Council on Drug Abuse.

“The highest proportion was reported in Dominica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the lowest proportion was in St. Kitts and Nevis, while Jamaica reported approximately 75 percent of inmates used marijuana,” NCDA Research Analyst Uki Atkinson said in a statement.

Conducted in 2014, the NCDA survey sought to explore the relationship between drugs and crime in Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda and St. Kitts and Nevis.

An investigation was underway Tuesday in Trinidad and Tobago over allegations that marijuana was found two years ago in the home of the island nation’s prime minister, according to a new report. Five grams of “a ‘plant like material’ resembling that of marijuana” was found in the private residence of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar in 2013, according to a police press statement released on a local news outlet’s Facebook page.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Embattled former FIFA executive and former national security minister, Jack Warner, has claimed that he was involved in a plan to bury the alleged discovery of marijuana at the home of Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar in the Philippines.

Warner, in a statement dated June 6, said he and former deputy commissioner of police Mervyn Richardson planned to bury the drug that was found on April 12, 2013, while the prime minister was in New York.

Warner – the leader of the Independent Liberal Party (ILP) - also named Gary Griffith, then adviser to prime minister and Housing Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal, as being part of the plan to ensure there was no criminal probe into the alleged marijuana discovery.

Secretary General of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, Sat Maharaj, is calling on Government and the relevant authorities to begin discussion and seek public referendum on the pros and cons of decriminalising marijuana.

The outspoken Maharaj said members of local law enforcement spend a lot of time carrying out marijuana eradication exercises and searches of persons for small amounts of the narcotic who are prosecuted and sent to jail.

A key component of Jamaica’s business community wants regional leaders to determine whether Washington would oppose efforts by the island to export locally produced marijuana to the U.S. for the medical industry when they meet with President Barack Obama in Jamaica early next month.

Both the White House and Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller announced plans for the visit this week as Obama prepares to make his second official visit to a Caribbean trade bloc member state since taking office six years ago.

In 2009, he flew to Trinidad both to meet with leaders and to attend the hemispheric Summit of Americas which Trinidad had hosted also in April of that year.

A passionate pro-marijuana activist turned up at the United National Congress’ (UNC) Monday night forum in Barrackpore, with a message.
During the feature speech of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the unnamed man moved to the front of the audience packed into the hall of the Khanhai Presbyterian Primary School.

And while the Persad-Bissessar knocked the Opposition Peoples National Movement and lauded her Peoples Partnership government, the man held high a poster addressed to her, reading “Ganja, Legalise Weed Tanty Kamala”. 

Each time Persad-Bissessar made a point, the man cheered and pointed to his sign. His message was not acknowledged, and the discrimination of marijuana, which was recently done in Jamaica, was not a topic addressed by Persad-Bissessar.

WITH Caribbean neighbour Jamaica making moves to decriminalise marijuana University of the West Indies (UWI) Professor Emeritus Kenneth Ramchand is renewing his calls for marijuana to be decriminalised in Trinidad and Tobago for medicinal purposes.

In January this year the Jamaican Government tabled the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2015 in that country’s Senate to decriminalise marijuana for medicinal, religious and personal use. 

The People’s Partnership Government should be careful not to pursue the same course as Jamaica which recently legalised the use of marijuana for medical purposes, says political analyst Dr Bishnu Ragoonath. 

He believes such a move will not receive public support.

In an interview on Tuesday, Ragoonath said the Government would be treading on shaky ground if it pursued a policy to decriminalise marijuana.

“At this time, the Government has to be wary of societal needs and demands. The Government is preparing to go into a general election and should be careful as to what policies they will bring to the fore at this point in time,” he said.

He said that drug use had been linked to crime.

Marijuana caution

Sunday, January 18 2015

RECENT events in the news locally hint at a significant use of illicit marijuana by university students, a topic likely to be raised now by anxious parents with their youngsters in households across the country.

We think it is an apt time to sound a note of caution as to the drug’s harmful effects. At present, Trinidad and Tobago, like much of the rest of the world, faces a very confused picture as to how the drug should be viewed.

It is still illegal in most countries including ours, but has been decriminalised in places such as Uruguay and the State of Colorado and Washington DC. Even as in Europe some police forces now merely warn but not prosecute users.