Gail Alexan­der

Light up or not?T&T's po­si­tion on de­crim­i­nal­is­ing use of mar­i­jua­na for med­ical rea­sons is among front burn­er is­sues at Cari­com's 25th In­ter­s­es­sion­al meet­ing start­ing to­day in St Vin­cent.Cari­com chair­man St Vin­cent Prime Min­is­ter Ralph Gon­salves who led a re­gion­al call to de­crim­i­nalise use of the herb for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es has placed the mat­ter on the In­ter­s­es­sion­al's agen­da for dis­cus­sions.

Gon­salves met with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the is­sue last Sep­tem­ber when Per­sad-Bisses­sar was Cari­com chair­man.T&T's po­si­tions on these and oth­er mat­ters will be pre­sent­ed at the In­ter­s­es­sion­al by Per­sad-Bisses­sar and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an. Gon­salves said there is "quite a long" agen­da." for the two-day meet­ing.

The an­nu­al cau­cus is usu­al­ly held in Feb­ru­ary. Gon­salves is quot­ed by CMC as say­ing that the de­ci­sion to post­pone it to this month was due to the ab­sence of Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who chairs Cari­com's se­cu­ri­ty com­mit­tee. Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­turned from Chi­na last week.Gon­salves said he want­ed crime and se­cu­ri­ty dis­cussed and Per­sad-Bisses­sar was the lead prime min­is­ter on that in the re­gion.

De­crim­i­nal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na use is among new­er Cari­com mat­ters on the agen­da. Cari­com spokesman Leonard Robert­son said a pre­lim­i­nary re­port on the is­sue done by re­searchers, which in­di­cates that de­crim­i­nal­is­ing the herb could help the re­gion's ail­ing economies, will be dis­cussed.Af­ter Ja­maica sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to de­crim­i­nalise mar­i­jua­na use for med­ical pur­pos­es by year end, the Ba­hamas in­di­cat­ed it was open to dis­cussing the is­sue at this week's In­ter­s­es­sion­al.

While the mat­ter has be­come a head­line grab­ber, pro­pelled by ac­tivists in Ja­maica, St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent, oth­er agen­da items ex­pect­ed to com­mand equal at­ten­tion fo­cus on in­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy and hu­man re­source de­vel­op­ment, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dook­er­an said yes­ter­day.Dook­er­an said the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion sug­ges­tion stemmed from a pro­pos­al in a drug re­port done by the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS).

Gon­salves and Bar­ba­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Fre­un­del Stu­art met with Per­sad-Bisses­sar last Sep­tem­ber to dis­cuss the is­sue.In a let­ter to Per­sad-Bisses­sar seek­ing the meet­ing, Gon­salves said it was "high time" Cari­com ad­dressed this mat­ter in a "sen­si­ble, fo­cused, not hys­ter­i­cal man­ner."

He said de­bate on the is­sue in Ja­maica and oth­er Cari­com states about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of med­ical mar­i­jua­na as an eco­nom­ic and com­mer­cial in­dus­try. Gon­salves said the pub­lic was dis­ap­point­ed with Cari­com's fail­ure to jet­ti­son "un­nec­es­sary cau­tion and lethar­gy" in ad­dress­ing some con­tro­ver­sial con­tem­po­rary is­sues of "re­al im­port."

Just be­fore the meet­ing, T&T Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie had said this coun­try's crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem was in cri­sis and ur­gent reme­dies were need­ed, adding that one such rem­e­dy was de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of pos­ses­sion of small amounts of mar­i­jua­na.Af­ter the meet­ing with Gon­salves and Stu­art, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Cari­com hasn't tak­en any de­ci­sion to sup­port de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na in the Caribbean re­gion, al­though it is con­duct­ing re­search on med­i­c­i­nal use of the plant.

She said Cari­com wasn't in a po­si­tion at this time to take a de­ci­sion on the mat­ter. Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that T&T's Gov­ern­ment would give the mat­ter con­sid­er­a­tion but took no po­si­tion on it.Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that much more con­sul­ta­tion must take place in Cari­com mem­ber states with their var­i­ous stake­hold­er groups be­fore any con­sid­er­a­tion to de­crim­i­nalise mar­i­jua­na and ap­prove its use for health pur­pos­es

She al­so said that Cari­com's Sec­re­tari­at was man­dat­ed to re­search the is­sue with re­spect to the med­ical use and the leg­isla­tive is­sues.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said TT's Na­tion­al Drug Coun­cil, which had been ad­dress­ing use of cannabis for med­ical pur­pos­es, de­vel­oped a con­cept pa­per which was to be passed to the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at.Gon­salves said St Vin­cent had no plan to pass the is­sue, but would work on it through Cari­com.

He said he knew peo­ple in St Vin­cent who used the mar­i­jua­na for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es and the pro­pos­al wouldn't mean le­gal­is­ing it, nor had he reached the stage of seek­ing de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion for small amounts.He said he was on­ly seek­ing dis­cus­sion on med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es, adding that a plea by St Lu­cian Prime Min­ster Ken­ny An­tho­ny for a Cari­com Com­mis­sion on mar­i­jua­na fell on deaf ears.