Cannabis users can breathe eas­i­er to­mor­row as the Dan­ger­ous Drugs (Amend­ment) Act is now in ef­fect.

On Fri­day, Pres­i­dent Paula Mae-Weekes pro­claimed the leg­is­la­tion which now al­lows adults to have up to 30 grammes of cannabis in their pos­ses­sion and house­holds to have up to four plants with­out fac­ing crim­i­nal charges.

The new law states that any­one found with 30 to 60 grammes of cannabis will now be sub­ject­ed to a $2,000 tick­etable of­fence.

And any­one caught with pos­ses­sion of 60 to 100 grammes of mar­i­jua­na will now be sub­ject­ed to up to 50 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice and al­so a max­i­mum fine of $75,000.

Se­nior Coun­sel Fyard Ho­sein will al­so head to the court to­day to be­gin the process of seek­ing free­dom for some 101 per­sons, in­clud­ing 14 chil­dren in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tres, who have been in­car­cer­at­ed for pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na.

But while cannabis users, Rasta­far­i­ans, and oth­er ad­vo­cates will be cel­e­brat­ing to­day, there are sev­er­al per­sons and or­gan­i­sa­tions who have ex­pressed con­cern about the pas­sage of the law.

On Fri­day Non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, Re­buildTT wrote to Weekes urg­ing her to post­pone procla­ma­tion of the law.

Al­thought the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Amend­ment Act was passed in both Hous­es of Par­lia­men, “pro-fam­i­ly NGO Re­buildTT be­lieves the leg­is­la­tion is flawed and will cause may­hem if im­ple­ment­ed im­me­di­ate­ly, and the Pres­i­dent should not be a rub­ber stamp with in­struc­tions to as­sent to the law by a giv­en date”.

“The NGO ques­tions how will some­one be able to pos­sess 30 grammes of weed when there is no le­gal source for the nar­cot­ic at the mo­ment,” it stat­ed.

Re­buildTT ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of en­dors­ing the “il­le­gal nar­cotics trade, say­ing weed pur­chased to­day “will come from il­lic­it weed farm­ers and drug push­ers”.

Re­buildTT al­so ques­tioned “whether po­lice on pa­trol will be is­sued scales to de­ter­mine the weight of small quan­ti­ties of weed, since pos­ses­sion of over 30 grammes will re­quire the is­suance of a tick­et”.

Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don yes­ter­day said while mar­i­jua­na use may no longer be a crim­i­nal of­fence it is still a “so­cial of­fence.”

Gor­don said he was hap­py to see those be­ing freed for small amounts of mar­i­jua­na.

“Our jails are filled with young men, young black men I would say, who their on­ly crime is pos­ses­sion of a lit­tle bit of mar­i­jua­na and I think that is an in­jus­tice,” Gor­don said.

“And many of them can’t pay bail which means they have to re­main in jail while the case is go­ing on and I don’t think that is the kind of so­ci­ety we want to be­come,” he said.

Gor­don, how­ev­er, said mar­i­jua­na is still a “harm­ful drug”.

“On the oth­er hand mar­i­jua­na is a harm­ful drug, I have had eight or nine young peo­ple with mar­i­jua­na psy­chosis on­ly be­cause they smok­ing mar­i­jua­na,” Gor­don said.

“And we can’t think that mar­i­jua­na as a drug is a neu­tral drug, it is not neu­tral it is a harm­ful drug and for some kids it is go­ing to mess with their minds and de­stroy their life chances, it al­so drops the en­er­gy lev­el of boys and es­pe­cial­ly teenaged boys, and so we can’t act as though it is a good thing to be smok­ing mar­i­jua­na and make it okay,” he said.

Gor­don said the law has to crack down on drug push­ers.

“I would say that small amounts of mar­i­jua­na should not con­sti­tute a crim­i­nal of­fence, it might be a so­cial of­fence and we might have to ask peo­ple to go to re­hab cen­tres, or to go to Fam­i­lies in Ac­tion or in­to AA pro­grammes be­cause there is a so­cial con­se­quence to the use of mar­i­jua­na that does af­fect our na­tion right now,” he said.

Gor­don said T&T will have to look at how oth­er coun­tries were af­fect­ed by de­crim­i­nal­is­ing and le­gal­is­ing weed as they are “start­ing to see so­cial ills hap­pen­ing”.

“We have to see how they are cop­ing with it and what’s hap­pen­ing, but the ear­ly warn­ing signs are not good and the re­al tragedy is we don’t want to send the sig­nal that be­cause we de­crim­i­nalised it is okay to use mar­i­jua­na. The same rea­son why there is a world cam­paign against smok­ing cig­a­rettes that should ap­ply to mar­i­jua­na which is more harm­ful to the lungs than cig­a­rettes are and so we should have a big cam­paign against the smok­ing of mar­i­jua­na al­though we de­crim­i­nalise be­cause it doesn’t make sense keep­ing chil­dren in jail,” he said.

For­mer In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor, Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist Pas­tor, Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin, said the mem­bers of par­lia­ment failed the na­tion’s youth by de­crim­i­nal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na.

“This is a hor­ri­ble move. This has noth­ing to do with care for young peo­ple, de­vel­op­ment of their minds, help­ing them to make healthy choic­es, en­gag­ing in a pos­i­tive lifestyle ,” Dot­tin said.

“The both hous­es of Par­lia­ment failed us, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the Sen­a­tors in­clud­ing the in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors they have failed the na­tion’s youth,” he said.

“I have been in­volved in fight­ing this thing and re­search­ing this thing over 35 years. We have seen hun­dreds of ad­dicts, righth now at the Matu­ra Cen­tre we have par­ents ask­ing us to take in their 15 year olds,” he said.

“This is a hor­rif­ic move, this is not good for the youth we can­not have na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and par­al­lel to that have na­tion­al brain de­struc­tion it just doesn’t work like that,” he said.

Dot­tin said the coun­try will have “more hos­tile young peo­ple” and “ we are go­ing to have more zom­bies walk­ing the streets”.

“This is just a bad move and it is a move made by peo­ple who have been mis­in­formed and who put the almighty dol­lar be­fore the young peo­ple and fam­i­lies in this coun­try,” Dot­tin said.