Busi­ness­man Frank Mout­tet, 81, is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to lis­ten to the plight of the Rasta­far­i­an com­mu­ni­ty and le­galise mar­i­jua­na.

In fact, Mout­tet said he want­ed to go one step fur­ther and called for all drugs to be le­galised.

Mout­tet made the state­ments on Wednes­day as the sec­ond pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na was held at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' St Au­gus­tine cam­pus' Teach­ing Learn­ing Cen­tre.

"I've nev­er bought, sold, had any­thing to do with mar­i­jua­na ex­cept, I have a con­di­tion called in­vol­un­tary tremors and some­body rec­om­mend­ed to me 'well you could fix that try CBD oils'," Mout­tet said.

"I tried the CBD oil for two months about three months ago. It didn't work, it was a waste of mon­ey and time," he said.

"On the oth­er side I know a lot about mar­i­jua­na be­cause I have close fam­i­ly, my wife and I had to go to Mt St Bene­dict for al­most two years, every week, it was an in­cred­i­ble ex­pe­ri­ence, so I know what mar­i­jua­na does and I know what it doesn't do and I will say this to you, I will ask you and the Gov­ern­ment to lis­ten se­ri­ous­ly to the Ras­ta com­mu­ni­ty and le­galise it," Mout­tet said.

"And I'm go­ing to sug­gest to you not just le­galise mar­i­jua­na but go a step fur­ther a le­galise all drugs," he said.

Mout­tet said the le­gal­i­sa­tion of all drugs would have a pos­i­tive ef­fect in ad­dress­ing this coun­try's crime sit­u­a­tion.

"You will emp­ty the jails, you will emp­ty the re­mand yards, the re­mand yards are a hu­man rights dis­grace and we should be ashamed," Mout­tet said.

"I would rec­om­mend to you, see what hap­pened to Por­tu­gal, they emp­tied the jails, they re­duced their crime, they got rid of the gangs, a hun­dred Gary Grif­fiths can't do that," he said.

Makaan Grant, 27, who was ar­rest­ed at a cannabis ral­ly held by the All Man­sions of Rasta­fari two Sun­days ago at Skin­ner Park in San Fer­nan­do was in the crowd on Wednes­day.

Grant was or­dered to per­form 80 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice af­ter he plead­ed guilty to pos­ses­sion of .6 of a grammes of mar­i­jua­na.

A man at the con­sul­ta­tion yes­ter­day ac­cused the po­lice of "en­trap­ment" for hold­ing Grant at the ral­ly and called for a mora­to­ri­um against ar­rests for cannabis while the con­ver­sa­tion about de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion takes place.

Al-Rawi, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs Fitzger­ald Hinds, med­ical prac­ti­tion­er An­tho­ny Pot­tinger and mar­i­jua­na ex­pert Mar­cus Ramkissoon formed the pan­el yes­ter­day.

Al­so in the au­di­ence were Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat, Sport Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe and UWI St Au­gus­tine prin­ci­pal Prof Bri­an Copeland.

Jail gan­ja sta­tis­tics

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi on Wednes­day said more than half of the peo­ple in re­mand and con­vict­ed for mar­i­jua­na of­fences over the past six years were of African de­scent.

Be­tween 2014 and 2019, some 4,694 male in­mates were re­mand­ed at the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison Al-Rawi said.

Of that fig­ure 2,425 were of African de­scent, he said.

The dif­fer­ence com­prised of 1,301 de­scribed as mixed, 918 of East In­di­an de­scent, 49 His­pan­ics and one per­son of Asian de­scent.

For the same six year pe­ri­od 1,852 males con­vict­ed for mar­i­jua­na re­lat­ed of­fences were housed at MSP, Al-Rawi said.

Of that fig­ure again more than half, 1,033, were of African de­scent.

The dif­fer­ence com­prised of 429 de­scribed as mixed, 378 of East In­di­an de­scent and 12 His­pan­ics.

Young males of African de­scent aged be­tween 18 to 35 were the main sub­set in both the re­mand and con­vict­ed fig­ures.

Al-Rawi ad­mit­ted that ac­cord­ing to the sta­tis­tics young males of African de­scent are most at risk with mar­i­jua­na laws.