Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has un­veiled more of her par­ty’s plans to de­vel­op the lo­cal cannabis sec­tor, say­ing this will be among new ini­tia­tives her par­ty will use to stim­u­late rev­enue streams out­side of tra­di­tion­al in­dus­tries.

Speak­ing dur­ing a meet­ing at the Las Lo­mas #2 Recre­ation Grounds on Sat­ur­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in­vest­ing in the cul­ti­va­tion and ex­port of cannabis for recre­ation­al pur­pos­es could im­prove this coun­try’s earn­ing ca­pac­i­ty while cre­at­ing new em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties at home.

Quot­ing fig­ures which sug­gest­ed that the glob­al cannabis mar­ket was pro­ject­ed to ex­ceed US$100 bil­lion by 2030, she said T&T should po­si­tion it­self to take ad­van­tage of such wide­spread de­mand and an­nounced a slew of in­cen­tives to help en­hance the growth of cannabis cul­ti­va­tion, while al­so reg­u­lar­is­ing the in­dus­try to en­sure com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Among the ini­tia­tives, she said a UNC gov­ern­ment will:

• Pro­vide in­cen­tives and train­ing pro­grammes for small farm­ers in­ter­est­ed in cul­ti­vat­ing com­mer• Fa­cil­i­tate co-op­er­a­tives where small farm­ers can pool re­sources to ac­cess agro-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties or sell crops to larg­er en­ti­ties.

• En­sure that mar­gin­alised fa­cil­i­ties af­fect­ed by past cannabis crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion have ac­cess to li­cences and op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the in­dus­try.

• De­vel­op part­ner­ships with re­gion­al Cari­com part­ners and lead­ers to har­monise stan­dards for med­ical mar­i­jua­na ex­ports, and.

• Po­si­tion T&T as a key sup­pli­er of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal grade cannabis prod­ucts in de­vel­oped mar­kets.

De­spite this in­ter­est in the cul­ti­va­tion and mar­ket­ing of cannabis, Per­sad-Bisses­sar main­tained that the par­ty’s in­ten­tion was not to en­cour­age recre­ation­al use of the drug.

Dur­ing her re­ply to the 2023-2024 Bud­get in Oc­to­ber 2023, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had called on Gov­ern­ment to re­view the leg­is­la­tion on mar­i­jua­na us­age, as she claimed there was an “ex­po­nen­tial in­crease” in mar­i­jua­na us­age and ad­dic­tion among teenagers and young adults.

“Due to the ab­sence of state agency over­sight and con­trol of sup­ply, users are smok­ing mar­i­jua­na laced with co­caine il­le­gal­ly im­port­ed. My Gov­ern­ment gave this coun­try’s youth lap­tops to learn. This Gov­ern­ment gave them mar­i­jua­na,” she said in 2023.

Apart from be­ing a stake­hold­er in the re­gion­al cannabis in­dus­try, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so un­veiled her par­ty’s in­ten­tion to in­crease in­vest­ment on dig­i­tal con­tent cre­ators and so­cial me­dia in­flu­encers.

She ac­knowl­edged that so­cial me­dia played an in­creas­ing­ly valu­able role in on­line mar­ket­ing and said once lever­aged prop­er­ly, dig­i­tal cre­atives could form mean­ing­ful part­ner­ships with es­tab­lished brands.

To en­hance this, she promised fur­ther in­vest­ment in the sec­tor if vot­ed in­to of­fice.

“We will part­ner with the pri­vate sec­tor to spon­sor work­shops on dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strate­gies and AI in­te­gra­tion in con­tent cre­ation. We will of­fer cours­es on so­cial me­dia and new me­dia man­age­ment, video pro­duc­tion and AI tools. We will en­hance af­ford­able ac­cess to in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty na­tion­wide to en­sure cit­i­zens have ac­cess to on­line plat­forms ef­fi­cient­ly.”

She al­so re­spond­ed to crit­ics of her poli­cies, not­ing that these ini­tia­tives could al­so feed in­to oth­er pro­grammes, as they would pro­vide jobs and in­come.

“They ask where we will get the mon­ey? This is where we can cre­ate jobs, earn rev­enue and bring mon­ey in.”

Take day off on elec­tion day

Mean­while, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the pub­lic’s on­ly pri­or­i­ty on elec­tion day should be to vote, as she urged them to take the day off from work and en­cour­age oth­ers to do the same.

She added that she would en­sure that work­ers were not pe­nalised for miss­ing work on April 28, if she was vot­ed in­to of­fice.

“So don’t get fright­ened, don’t get chained up. Stay home and go out to vote. Take your car and phone and spend the day car­ry­ing out vot­ers,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, not­ing that one day off was worth it to se­cure a bet­ter long-term fu­ture.

“Peo­ple ask­ing ‘How can I help? How can I con­tribute?’ This is a way every one of you can con­tribute, this is a way every one of you can con­tribute, go­ing ear­ly cast­ing votes, pick­ing up oth­ers and tak­ing them or call­ing them to vote.”