Ap­plaud­ing the leg­isla­tive steps un­der­tak­en by Gov­ern­ment to de­crim­i­nalise mar­i­jua­na in T&T, Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine is hop­ing the is­sue does not be­come a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball for those in au­thor­i­ty want­i­ng to score points.

Chair of the Cari­com Re­gion­al Com­mis­sion on Mar­i­jua­na, Belle An­toine said the pro­pos­al that any­one found to be us­ing or in pos­ses­sion of 30 grammes of mar­i­jua­na or less would not be ar­rest­ed or charged was, “More than a lot of the oth­er coun­tries has looked at so far. I am so hap­py we have gone the way of de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion.

"One thing I am very hap­py about...and again, as I said on my Face­book, I hope it is not a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball be­cause the process start­ed in 2013 when the com­mis­sion was formed and all gov­ern­ment in­clud­ing ours agreed to form a com­mis­sion."

The com­mis­sion was es­tab­lished by the de­ci­sion of the 25th In­ter-Ses­sion­al Meet­ing of the CARI­COM Heads of Gov­ern­ment in March 2014 in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines with a man­date to con­duct a rig­or­ous en­quiry in­to the so­cial, eco­nom­ic, health and le­gal is­sues sur­round­ing mar­i­jua­na use in the Caribbean; and to de­ter­mine whether there should be a change in the cur­rent drug clas­si­fi­ca­tion of mar­i­jua­na there­by mak­ing the drug more ac­ces­si­ble for all types of us­age (re­li­gious, recre­ation­al, med­ical and re­search).

Re­fer­ring to the two pieces of leg­is­la­tion—the Dan­ger­ous Drugs (Amend­ment) Bill and the Cannabis Con­trol Bill—which were laid in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, Belle An­toine was heart­ened that the au­thor­i­ties were mov­ing to ad­dress the is­sue in a holis­tic man­ner.

She said, “We have to get it right but at least we are cog­nisant of all that needs to be done at the lev­el of the pris­ons, the in­equal­i­ties, and the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry type of law en­force­ment seen over so many years.”

De­clar­ing this to be a step in the right di­rec­tion, Belle An­toine urged peo­ple to be pa­tient and wait un­til the leg­is­la­tion is en­act­ed.

The sec­ond read­ing of the bills is ex­pect­ed to take place some­time next week af­ter which, the Clerk of the House will read the bills for the third time in­clud­ing any amend­ments that were made dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage. Once the bills are passed in the Low­er House then, they will be laid in the Sen­ate for de­bate.

Re­gard­ing how Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to ad­dress the is­sue of med­ical mar­i­jua­na, Belle-An­toine re­vealed that her deep­est fear was that the au­thor­i­ties would take med­ical mar­i­jua­na and open it up to big busi­ness, with no as­sis­tance or re­form as it re­lates to so­cial jus­tice is­sues.

Com­ment­ing about so­cial me­dia feed­back which la­belled the penal­ties as harsh­er than usu­al, she warned, “We don’t want to pro­vide an­oth­er loop­hole to end up with more peo­ple in jail, so we have to care­ful. I am cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic, say­ing it is a step in the right di­rec­tion.”

•On Ju­ly 18, 2018, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­clared that de­crim­i­nal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na was not a pri­or­i­ty for this gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing an agree­ment at the 39th Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence in Mon­tego Bay, where a con­sen­sus was reached by CARI­COM mem­bers to re­view mar­i­jua­na as a Sched­ule 1 drug.

Row­ley’s po­si­tion against the leg­is­la­tion of mar­i­jua­na arose ear­ly in his ad­min­is­tra­tion.

•On May 2, 2016, Row­ley said his ad­min­is­tra­tion had not dis­cussed de­crim­i­nal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na even as the AG was quot­ed as say­ing they had been re­view­ing ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion as well as plan­ning wide­spread con­sul­ta­tion be­fore adopt­ing any po­si­tion.

•On May 7, 2016, days af­ter the AG an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment had be­gun the sta­tis­ti­cal ground­work on de­crim­i­nal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh con­firmed that he had the au­thor­i­ty to grant per­mis­sion for the im­por­ta­tion of med­ical mar­i­jua­na.

•Fol­low­ing a pe­ti­tion to le­galise mar­i­jua­na in late Ju­ly 2018, the AG said Gov­ern­ment would hold con­sul­ta­tions on the is­sue of the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of cannabis.