Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment have agreed to es­tab­lish a re­gion­al com­mis­sion on mar­i­jua­na to look at the so­cial, eco­nom­ic, health, and le­gal is­sues sur­round­ing the use of the drug and to ad­vise whether there should be a change in its cur­rent clas­si­fi­ca­tion to make it more ac­ces­si­ble for a range of users.Cari­com heads al­so wel­comed the an­nounce­ment by the Prime Min­is­ter of Do­mini­ca Roo­sevelt Sker­rit that Do­mini­ca's Par­lia­ment had ap­proved a bill to make the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) the coun­try's fi­nal court of ap­peal.

Sker­rit ad­vised that "the move away from the Privy Coun­cil would be com­plet­ed once the Pres­i­dent as­sents to the act, bring­ing it in­to force. Do­mini­ca will join Bar­ba­dos, Guyana and Be­lize as the fourth Cari­com mem­ber coun­try to give ef­fect to the Ap­pel­late Ju­ris­dic­tion of the CCJ," Sker­rit said.

They al­so recog­nised that this year marked the 25th an­niver­sary of the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on The Rights of the Child, signed by all Cari­com mem­ber states. They sup­port­ed the sub­mis­sion of Prime Min­is­ter of Grena­da Dr Kei­th Mitchell who called for an end to the in­sti­tu­tion­al­i­sa­tion of chil­dren un­der the age of three years in state-run and pri­vate homes–and in­stead, speed up their in­te­gra­tion in­to the fam­i­ly. This was stat­ed in a Ju­ly 4 Cari­com press re­lease.

These were three of sev­er­al is­sues that came up at the 35th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of Cari­com, held at Dick­en­son Bay, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, from Ju­ly 1 to 4.Oth­er is­sues raised were: a strate­gic 2015 to 2019 plan for the Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty; hu­man re­source de­vel­op­ment; cli­mate change; and bor­der is­sues.

At the Ju­ly 1 open­ing cer­e­mo­ny in An­tigua, at­tend­ed by Cari­com mem­ber states (in­clud­ing T&T's Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar), St Vin­cent and the Grenadines' Ralph Gon­salves said, "A con­cert­ed re­gion­al ap­proach is re­quired to im­prove our economies, cre­ate wealth and jobs, man­age much bet­ter our fis­cal and debt con­di­tion, and strength­en the so­cial safe­ty net for those who are dis­ad­van­taged."

Cari­com heads said the erad­i­ca­tion of pover­ty must re­main a core ob­jec­tive. They said per­sis­tent and emerg­ing chal­lenges of cli­mate change, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty, sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, food se­cu­ri­ty and nu­tri­tion, em­ploy­ment, chal­lenges fac­ing youth and chil­dren, crime and se­cu­ri­ty, and gov­er­nance is­sues should be fea­tured in the de­vel­op­ment agen­da.This agen­da should pro­mote the wel­fare of all peo­ple, they agreed.