Richard Lord

Cari­com chair­man and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says no de­ci­sion was tak­en on the is­sue of de­crim­i­nal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na in the re­gion.She was speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day 27th meet­ing of the Cari­com Bu­reau at the Noor Has­sanali Con­fer­ence Room, Par­lia­ment Build­ing, Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain.

Among the oth­er Caribbean lead­ers at­tend­ing were Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Fre­un­del Stu­art and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves. Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ir­win LaRocque al­so at­tend­ed.Gon­salves had writ­ten Per­sad-Bisses­sar seek­ing to have the mat­ter ad­dressed.

Not­ing that the is­sue of de­crim­i­nal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na was raised by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie on Mon­day at the open­ing of the new law term, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the news con­fer­ence that some 16 states in the Unit­ed States have (le­galised) mar­i­jua­na/cannabis for health pur­pos­es.She said, how­ev­er, the Cari­com lead­ers "were of the view in our pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions to­day that we'll need much fur­ther re­search (on the is­sue)."

The Cari­com chair­man said the bu­reau "has tasked the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at to do re­search with re­spect to the med­ical is­sues as well as on the leg­isla­tive and le­gal is­sues."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in T&T, the Na­tion­al Drug Coun­cil has been ad­dress­ing the is­sue of le­gal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na for med­ical pur­pos­es. She said the group had de­vel­oped a con­cept pa­per which will be giv­en to the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at for fur­ther dis­cus­sions. "So the de­ci­sion is no de­ci­sion was reached on that is­sue, ex­cept to say fur­ther re­search is need­ed, much more con­sul­ta­tions in each of our coun­tries with var­i­ous stake­hold­er groups."

In Feb­ru­ary next year the re­search will be pre­sent­ed by Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at to the Cari­com heads.On the is­sue of repa­ra­tion to Caribbean states for slav­ery and the slave trade, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said each Cari­com leader would speak about the mat­ter when they ad­dressed next week's Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in New York. She said the Cari­com states would pur­sue "diplo­mat­ic rules of en­gage­ment as we seek to re­pair the dam­age that would have been done to our coun­tries through the slave trade and slav­ery."

She said the ob­jec­tive was to en­sure that every­one ben­e­fit­ted. "It is not that we are seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion per per­son but to re­pair the coun­tries so every mem­ber of our lands will ben­e­fit, should we be suc­cess­ful in this bid," she added.Gon­salves told the news con­fer­ence repa­ra­tion would not on­ly ben­e­fit Cari­com states but Eu­rope al­so.

He said the claims for repa­ra­tion for na­tive geno­cide and slav­ery "con­nects with the lega­cy of these crimes against hu­man­i­ty and the ex­tent which those crimes have con­tributed to the cur­rent state of un­der­de­vel­op­ment."He said the in­ten­tion was for Cari­com states "to work with the for­mer colo­nial pow­ers in Britain, France and Hol­land in a non-con­fronta­tion­al way and to be part of a de­vel­op­men­tal di­a­logue in go­ing for­ward."