Gail Alexan­der

A par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing trend has emerged in re­cent years where cannabis and oth­er sub­stances are in­creas­ing­ly be­ing pre­sent­ed in var­i­ous ed­i­ble forms, such as gum­mies, brown­ies, and cup­cakes, ap­pear­ing harm­less or at­trac­tive to youths, cre­at­ing new av­enues through which chil­dren and ado­les­cents may be ex­posed to dan­ger­ous sub­stances, says At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie.

Je­re­mie spoke in yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on Gov­ern­ment's Bill to in­crease to 21 years the age to use al­co­hol, to­bac­co and va­p­ing prod­ucts and to 25 years for the use of cannabis and to par­tic­i­pate in gam­bling.

How­ev­er, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who al­so spoke in the de­bate, warned that the Bill could bal­loon un­der­ground trade and ex­pand the num­ber of peo­ple in con­flict with the law.

Je­re­mie said it was the Gov­ern­ment's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to safe­guard young adults from the harm­ful ef­fects of sub­stance abuse and gam­bling, which could have ir­re­versible ef­fects. He not­ed a 2025 Unit­ed Na­tions re­port that T&T's 1.5m pop­u­la­tion has 285,000 peo­ple in the 10 to 24-year age group.

"It's not an in­signif­i­cant de­mo­graph­ic co­hort. It rep­re­sents a sub­stan­tial por­tion of T&T's fu­ture work­force, fu­ture lead­er­ship and fu­ture pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty. Yet it's a pop­u­la­tion in­creas­ing­ly ex­posed to a con­ver­gence of pub­lic health chal­lenges in­clud­ing the ris­ing preva­lence of Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing men­tal health out­comes and a range of so­cial and eco­nom­ic fac­tors that neg­a­tive­ly in­flu­ence health and well-be­ing. No re­spon­si­ble gov­ern­ment can ig­nore these re­al­i­ties..." Je­re­mie added.

He said a sub­stan­tial body of med­ical, so­cial and sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence shows ear­ly ex­po­sure to ad­dic­tive sub­stances and high-risk be­hav­iour can have ad­verse ef­fects on phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al well-be­ing and fu­ture eco­nom­ic prospects.

Je­re­mie said the pol­i­cy ra­tio­nale for the re­forms is re­in­forced by ev­i­dence. Not­ing re­cent­ly trend­ing ed­i­bles, through which cannabis and oth­er sub­stances can be pre­sent­ed, Je­re­mie said young peo­ple may be in­tro­duced to sub­stance abuse through peer in­flu­ence and so­cial ac­cep­tance.

He not­ed a PA­HO 2024 sur­vey on risk fac­tors re­gard­ing NCDs in a sam­ple of 4,052 adults be­tween the ages of 18 and 69, which re­vealed trou­bling trends: no­tably, al­co­hol con­sump­tion in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly from 40.6 per cent in the 2011 sur­vey to 51.5 per cent in the 2024 sur­vey, and par­tic­u­lar is­sues with the 18 to 44 group. Al­so cit­ed were Na­tion­al Al­co­hol and Drug Abuse Pre­ven­tion Pro­gramme find­ings and TTPS 2025 fig­ures of 700 per­sons charged for drink­ing un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol.

The AG said the Bill was no dif­fer­ent from that which has been at­tempt­ed in cer­tain oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions and their ex­pe­ri­ence, while not bind­ing on Gov­ern­ment, is in­struc­tive. He cit­ed the US Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion's May 2024 re­port en­ti­tled "Why a min­i­mum le­gal drink­ing age of 21 works".

Je­re­mie said it states that min­i­mum le­gal drink­ing age laws save lives and pro­tect every­one, es­pe­cial­ly youths, from al­co­hol-re­lat­ed crime. "Their CDC re­ports that when the na­tion­al min­i­mum age of 21 was ad­just­ed, US states rais­ing their min­i­mum le­gal drink­ing age to 21 ex­pe­ri­enced a 16 per cent re­duc­tion in mo­tor ve­hi­cle crash­es....," Je­re­mie added, al­so not­ing oth­er coun­tries' stan­dard of 21.

"San Fer­nan­do West peo­ple wor­ried" - Faris

PNM's Al-Rawi ex­pressed con­cerns on claus­es in­clud­ing those which clashed with oth­er laws con­cern­ing chil­dren. "The prob­lem here is we're de­bat­ing in a vac­u­um on a se­ri­ous is­sue. As a man that got 'licks', lost my seat as I did, I still have con­tact with all of San Fer­nan­do West, who have ex­pressed to me deep anx­i­ety over what's go­ing to hap­pen to them by ap­pli­ca­tion of (Clause four, for in­stance), vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple."

Al-Rawi ex­pressed con­cern about oth­er claus­es al­low­ing youths to choose re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion over fines for vi­o­la­tions with­out tiered warn­ings. He ques­tioned what sys­tems will track this.

"The ap­pli­ca­tion of this law will bal­loon the num­ber of per­sons in con­flict with the law. We're at a time when it will bal­loon an un­der­ground trade, un­der­ground par­tic­i­pa­tion, whether it's of the boot­leg type you see in movies back in the day un­der pro­hi­bi­tion or not, the re­al­i­ty is we're go­ing to have se­ri­ous num­bers com­ing in­to the sys­tem," he added.

Al-Rawi said he isn't a pro­po­nent of al­co­hol, cannabis or to­bac­co and spent a life en­gaged in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and train­ing as it's good men­tal stim­u­la­tion and a health by-prod­uct. Urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to have the Bill ex­am­ined by a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee and bring da­ta for­ward, he added, "We've been told a cer­tain (Sen­ate) Bench won't be en­ter­tained and the oth­er bench is just ig­nored, so where do we go on a se­ri­ous is­sue?"