Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Win­ston Dook­er­an's call for a dis­cus­sion on the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of gan­ja is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to think about so­cial change lo­cal­ly and of­fers a po­ten­tial way to re­duce crim­i­nals, vi­o­lence, and a lu­cra­tive un­der­ground econ­o­my.

There have al­ready been a va­ri­ety of com­men­taries of­fered in the lo­cal press. First came the con­ser­v­a­tive moral back­lash. Then some lawyers spoke up, in less moral but still un­der­stand­ably con­ser­v­a­tive terms. Lat­ter­ly a few com­men­ta­tors have come out in favour of not just de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion but le­gal­i­sa­tion, point­ing out the war on gan­ja has al­ready been lost.

In Por­tu­gal and Hol­land where it has been de­crim­i­nalised, gan­ja smok­ing across the en­tire pop­u­la­tion, af­ter a short ini­tial spike, re­duced. And most im­por­tant­ly amongst un­der-18s who are the most vul­ner­a­ble to men­tal health risks.

Some say gan­ja ar­rived in the Caribbean via Amerindi­an groups. Oth­ers men­tion Span­ish Con­quis­ta­dors in the 1500s or sug­gest gan­ja came from Africa with the slave trade. What we know for a fact is gan­ja was brought to Trinidad in the mid-19th cen­tu­ry by in­den­tured labour­ers as a folk med­i­cine and by the British them­selves.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers