At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, has con­firmed that 45 in­di­vid­u­als have had their mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion charges ex­punged since the Gov­ern­ment pro­claimed the Dan­ger­ous Drugs (Amend­ment) Act, 2019, which al­lows peo­ple to legal­ly pos­sess small quan­ti­ties of cannabis.

The act, pro­claimed by Le­gal No­tice No 29 of 2019, came in­to ef­fect on De­cem­ber 23, 2019. It de­crim­i­nalised pos­ses­sion of cer­tain amounts of cannabis and cannabis resin and in­tro­duced a tiered penal­ty sys­tem based on the quan­ti­ty of the sub­stance in pos­ses­sion. Un­der Sec­tion 5D(3) of the act, in­di­vid­u­als charged with pos­sess­ing no more than 100 grammes of cannabis or 14 grammes of cannabis resin be­fore the law’s com­mence­ment are el­i­gi­ble to ap­ply to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for the ex­punge­ment of their records.

Be­fore the act’s procla­ma­tion, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi had stat­ed that the law could ben­e­fit over 85,000 peo­ple who had been charged with mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion over the past decade, as well as 101 in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als, in­clud­ing 14 chil­dren in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tres.

In re­sponse to a ques­tion from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards about how many peo­ple had ben­e­fit­ed from this pro­vi­sion, Ar­mour said, “As it re­lates to non-pris­on­ers, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice has in­formed us that, to date, 46 ap­pli­ca­tions for ex­punge­ment have been re­ceived. Of these, 45 have met the cri­te­ria, were processed, and have had their records ex­punged. One re­main­ing ap­pli­ca­tion is pend­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion re­gard­ing the quan­ti­ty of drugs in­volved in the charge. Ef­forts to re­solve this is­sue are on­go­ing.”

Re­gard­ing prison in­mates, Ar­mour stat­ed that the TTPS had in­formed the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs that, since the act’s procla­ma­tion, no in­mates had ap­plied for the ex­punge­ment of their records. The Crim­i­nal Records Of­fice was un­able to con­firm whether any in­mates had been re­leased or had their records ex­punged as a re­sult of this leg­is­la­tion.

Ar­mour al­so said that the Prison Ser­vice re­port­ed that its War­rants De­part­ment had not re­ceived any in­struc­tions in­di­cat­ing that any in­mate ar­rest­ed and charged with mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion, and sub­se­quent­ly in­car­cer­at­ed un­der a court or­der, had been par­doned, had their charges dis­missed, or had been re­leased due to the ap­pli­ca­tion of the act.

He not­ed that the Ju­di­cia­ry in­formed the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs that it does not main­tain this type of in­for­ma­tion in its data­base, while the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions al­so re­port­ed that it did not have such in­for­ma­tion.

Richards asked if there was any in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to in­mates in­di­cat­ing that they may qual­i­fy for record ex­punge­ment, even while in­car­cer­at­ed. Ar­mour re­spond­ed that he had not re­ceived any such in­for­ma­tion from the au­thor­i­ties but would be will­ing to in­ves­ti­gate fur­ther if Richards made a for­mal re­quest. (KF)