Joel Julien

Crim­i­nals in this coun­try are get­ting high smok­ing mar­i­jua­na laced with em­balm­ing flu­id to make them­selves ruth­less be­fore they go out on crime sprees, an ac­tivist who works with drug ad­dicts and in­mates has warned.

“There are crim­i­nals now and I read it last night and it re­al­ly gave me goose­bumps that their code is ‘smoke and for­get; kill and col­lect’,” ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty Garth St Clair has said.

“They are us­ing em­balm­ing oil with mar­i­jua­na when they are go­ing out to do crimes, em­balm­ing oils and mar­i­jua­na, be care­ful out there folks,” he said.

St Clair, the co-host of the pop­u­lar Eye on De­pen­den­cy pro­gramme, gave the warn­ing at the “Let’s Talk Cannabis: Prospects for Le­gal­i­sa­tion” pan­el dis­cus­sion held at the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies on Wednes­day night.

The use of mar­i­jua­na taint­ed with em­balm­ing flu­id is known as “smok­ing wet,” the T&T Guardian was told.

Em­balm­ing flu­id is a chem­i­cal used to pre­serve the dead and is a com­pound of formalde­hyde, methanol, ethanol and oth­er sol­vents.

In or­der to get an ad­di­tion­al high, crim­i­nals are said to be dip­ping their mar­i­jua­na cig­a­rettes in the em­balm­ing flu­id then putting them to dry be­fore smok­ing the taint­ed con­coc­tion.

“The ef­fects of em­balm­ing flu­id in­clud­ed vi­su­al and au­di­to­ry hal­lu­ci­na­tions, eu­pho­ria, a feel­ing of in­vin­ci­bil­i­ty and in­creased pain tol­er­ance,” the BBC stat­ed in a re­port on the phe­nom­e­non in Eng­land in 2001.

“How­ev­er, the drug al­so pro­duced feel­ing of anger, for­get­ful­ness and para­noia,” it stat­ed.

The high from “smok­ing wet” is said to last from be­tween six hours to three days. While smok­ing mar­i­jua­na laced with em­balm­ing flu­id has been tak­ing place in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for some time, the sit­u­a­tion ap­pears to be on the rise in the Caribbean re­gion this year.

Ear­li­er this year Ja­maica re­port­ed the process of smok­ing mar­i­jua­na taint­ed with em­balm­ing flu­id be­ing on the rise in gangs there.

The process has seemed to reach our shores now, St Clair said.

St Clair, who was dis­charged from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment in 1989, had been a crack user.

He al­so served six months in prison for lar­ce­ny af­ter his dis­charge.

Since his re­lease from prison St Clair and his wife Natasha Nunez have been ad­vo­cates for drug de­mand re­duc­tion and pre­ven­tion.

Speak­ing at the pan­el dis­cus­sion St Clair said he sup­ports the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na in this coun­try but said there must be ed­u­ca­tion about the drug. He, how­ev­er, called for smok­ing to be le­gal on­ly from 25 years of age.

“There is no point in crim­i­nal­is­ing our cit­i­zens for a harm­less drug as cannabis but we have to ed­u­cate be­cause there are those who it will bring harm to if they touch it if they have men­tal is­sues in their fam­i­lies, they will suf­fer psy­chot­ic episodes from smok­ing mar­i­jua­na,” he said.