Melis­sa Doughty

Di­rec­tor of Africana Stud­ies at Vir­ginia Poly­tech­nic In­sti­tute and State Uni­ver­si­ty Prof On­wu­biko Agozi­no is call­ing for the le­gal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na. He be­lieves peo­ple who use/sell mar­i­jua­na and may be ar­rest­ed and sen­tenced to prison for it can­not be com­pared with one in­car­cer­at­ed for homi­cide. He al­so be­lieves im­pris­on­ing some­one for a mar­i­jua­na of­fence ex­pos­es that in­di­vid­ual to vi­o­lent so­cial­i­sa­tion.

The right to sell mar­i­jua­na, as in Nether­lands or Por­tu­gal, he said, should al­so be de­crim­i­nalised there­by al­low­ing peo­ple to earn a liv­ing. Oth­er il­lic­it drugs such as co­caine, he said, should al­so be de­crim­i­nalised, but through ed­u­ca­tion, the pub­lic should be made alive to the the dan­gers.

"The war on drugs is a choice our lead­ers have made. Wag­ing war on drugs is not work­ing; what works is ed­u­ca­tion. Mar­i­jua­na nev­er killed any­body. We should end the war on drugs, le­galise mar­i­jua­na and al­low the young peo­ple here in Trinidad and To­ba­go to grow their lit­tle mar­i­jua­na and make a de­cent liv­ing and pay some tax­es," he said.

Agozi­no's com­ments came as he de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress at the open­ing day of the 14th Bian­nu­al In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Pe­nal Abo­li­tion (ICO­PA). The con­fer­ence in­vites the opin­ions and ex­per­tise of ac­tivists, aca­d­e­mics, jour­nal­ists, prac­ti­tion­ers, peo­ple cur­rent­ly or for­mer­ly im­pris­oned, sur­vivors of State and per­son­al harm and oth­ers from across the world work­ing to­ward the abo­li­tion of im­pris­on­ment, the pe­nal sys­tem, and the prison in­dus­tri­al com­plex.

Held in con­junc­tion with the In­sti­tute of In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, the con­fer­ence is be­ing host­ed at the uni­ver­si­ty's Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre for par­tic­i­pants from Ja­maica, the USA, UK and T&T.

Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ), Sir Den­nis By­ron chaired the pan­el on Crim­i­nal to Repar­a­tive Law. Agozi­no al­so rec­om­mends the lift­ing of the death penal­ty. He de­scribed as 'shame­ful' that the death penal­ty is be­ing re­tained in the con­sti­tu­tions of Caribbean coun­tries. He said the death penal­ty en­cour­ages one to kill one's wife or friend as a form of pun­ish­ment.

"The peo­ple who im­posed the death penal­ty on us, the Eu­ro­peans, have all abol­ished it. We did not make the law to kill our own peo­ple as pun­ish­ment. That is a Eu­ro­pean, mod­ern fetish of con­trol-freak tech­nol­o­gy. "As part of the de­coloni­sa­tion our peo­ple have been wag­ing for cen­turies we should say enough to the death penal­ty as pun­ish­ment. I say to you, peo­ple of Trinidad, you are the new Pharaohs of the age if you make it known that you do not want the death penal­ty any more," he said.

Crim­i­nol­o­gists, he said, should ad­vo­cate for the British to apol­o­gise and pay repa­ra­tion to the Shouter Bap­tists for the 1917 Or­di­nance which pro­hib­it­ed Shouter Bap­tists from their form of wor­ship. Agozi­no's ad­dress, "Con­trol-Freak Crim­i­nol­o­gy and Pe­nal Abo­li­tion­ism" called for the dis­ci­pline to take a peace­mak­ing and love­mak­ing per­spec­tive as es­poused by philoso­pher and crim­i­nol­o­gist Harold Pepin­sky and oth­ers.