Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Com­ment­ing on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill, 2026, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said this is just an­oth­er mon­ey-mak­ing ven­ture for the gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Beck­les said, “If you re­call last year in the bud­get de­bate, the min­is­ter of fi­nance said they were go­ing to raise a bil­lion dol­lars on tax­es.

“This is not iso­lat­ed from what is clear­ly a gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. Let’s go back to the traf­fic fines. I mean, just ab­solute­ly ridicu­lous.”

Beck­les said the Gov­ern­ment lacks a plan­ning pol­i­cy and is in­stead pass­ing leg­is­la­tion aimed at in­creas­ing fines.

“Is it rev­enue gen­er­a­tion or is it that you gen­uine­ly care about so­cial is­sues and you care about young peo­ple? We had the cannabis bill. We had two years of con­sul­ta­tion be­fore we brought that piece of leg­is­la­tion. They haven’t had a sin­gle day of con­sul­ta­tion. So we are say­ing you just sim­ply want to be a puni­tive gov­ern­ment. You don’t seem to care about peo­ple.”

She added that there are many peo­ple em­ployed in the in­dus­try that fa­cil­i­tates gam­bling and al­co­hol.

“The leg­is­la­tion is ‘one by vaps’,” she said.