Rhon­dor Dowlat

Col­in Stephen­son, di­rec­tor and co-founder of C420, T&T's first in­cor­po­rat­ed mar­i­jua­na law re­form NGO, is threat­en­ing to sue the Min­istry of Health for fail­ure to make rules

that gov­ern the use of the herb; fail­ure to make it known that laws re­gard­ing law­ful mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion ex­ist and fail­ure to ex­plore the ef­fi­ca­cy of the plant for us­es oth­er than smok­ing.

Stephen­son said un­der cur­rent laws in T&T, the pos­ses­sion, im­port, ex­port, sale, man­u­fac­ture, pro­duc­tion, cul­ti­va­tion or dis­tri­b­u­tion of mar­i­jua­na is le­gal as long as one has been is­sued a li­cense. He said C420 has ob­tained a le­gal opin­ion from the Min­istry of Health con­firm­ing that po­si­tion and the group has made sev­er­al ap­pli­ca­tions for med­i­c­i­nal cannabis li­cens­es on be­half of in­di­vid­u­als who feel the drug will be an ef­fec­tive treat­ment for their ill­ness­es.

"Since 2014, C420 has been ap­peal­ing for a mora­to­ri­um on ar­rests for cannabis pos­ses­sion whilst the so-called Cari­com Cannabis Com­mis­sion con­tin­ues to pon­tif­i­cate on non-is­sues such as de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion which is a fal­la­cy since cannabis is al­ready de­crim­i­nalised in the ma­jor­i­ty of Cari­com states," Stephen­son said.

He said let­ters were sent to Act­ing Comis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and sev­er­al mem­bers of her Cab­i­net call­ing for an im­me­di­ate mora­to­ri­um on mar­i­juans ar­rests.

He said in late 2014, Per­sad-Bisses­sar arranged for C420 to vis­it the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's Of­fice to put for­ward a pro­pos­al for mar­i­jua­na law re­form and to dis­cuss the mora­to­ri­um.

"The Min­is­ter of Health is the Min­is­ter tasked with is­su­ing the said li­cences. How­ev­er, Dr Fuad Khan, (for­mer) Min­is­ter of Health. had been derelict in his du­ty to write cannabis reg­u­la­tions de­spite the fact that this had been his du­ty since be­ing sworn in­to of­fice.

He as well as his ad­vi­sor, Hamid O'Brien, were made aware of the same by our le­gal coun­sel at a meet­ing in 2012 yet no ac­tion was tak­en by him, nor those whom he over­saw to write cannabis reg­u­la­tions. In April and May of 2015, the Prime Min­is­ter was again most gra­cious in writ­ing to in­form C420 that she had in­struct­ed Dr Fuad Khan to meet with us to dis­cuss cannabis law re­form and cannabis reg­u­la­tion.

"De­spite the Prime Min­is­ter's in­struc­tions and nu­mer­ous calls made by C420 to the Min­istry of Health and to the Min­is­ter's Con­stituen­cy Of­fice, no meet­ing took place," Stephen­son said.

He said an in­or­di­nate amount of time has elapsed and group now has no re­course oth­er than to in­struct its lawyers to serve the Min­istry of Health with a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter.

C420 will be seek­ing a for­mal re­sponse from new­ly ap­point­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al- Rawi as well as a meet­ing with the new Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rance Deyals­ingh.