The de­ci­sion by Gov­ern­ment to be­gin the process of de­crim­i­nal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na has been get­ting more sup­port from or­gan­i­sa­tions not promi­nent­ly vo­cal on many is­sues.

Among them, a less­er-known po­lit­i­cal par­ty called the Green Par­ty of TT, whose po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Everold Ho­sein de­scribed the de­ci­sion as “a nice move, and long­time over­due”.

“We prob­a­bly should have done this at the time of In­de­pen­dence. Rum was le­gal back then. And rum has done more dam­age to us than any oth­er drug,” Ho­sein said in a me­dia state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day.

He added: “The de­crim­i­nal­is­ing process, how­ev­er, seems a bit con­sti­pat­ed. There is noth­ing pro­posed on the small-scale farm­ing of mar­i­jua­na. So one won­ders if the sale of mar­i­jua­na is le­gal? And where is that stock of gan­ja go­ing to come from—from il­le­gal farm­ing of gan­ja in the hills? And we don’t have a law that lim­its the num­ber of bot­tles of rum in our homes. So why lim­it the amount of gan­ja we can have in our pos­ses­sion for per­son­al use?”

He said that al­though the mea­sures an­nounced by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi are small steps, there is room for ex­pan­sion.

“We can al­ways fix and ex­pand on the laws. But now let’s move on to some more se­ri­ous stuff. Can we have the same pas­sion­ate dis­cus­sion about gan­ja trans­ferred to a dis­cus­sion of the poor qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion pro­vid­ed to our young chil­dren in T&T?

“Can we have as pas­sion­ate a dis­cus­sion about the big fat WORM (Waster of Mon­ey and Re­sources) that we are about to swal­low with the up­com­ing silli­ness of the Lo­cal Elec­tions?”

The new mea­sures have not been re­ceived well by all, in­clud­ing mar­i­jua­na ac­tivist Naz­ma Muller.

Op­ti­mist­ic af­ter Thurs­day’s an­nounce­ment by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, cannabis ac­tivist Naz­ma Muller sat in the Par­lia­ment gallery as the AG laid two pieces of leg­is­la­tion in Par­lia­ment, the Dan­ger­ous Drugs (Amend­ment) Bill and the Cannabis Con­trol Bill, which will pave the way for the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na.

Speak­ing af­ter the leg­is­la­tion was laid in the Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Muller said: “Peo­ple will, of course be very glad, be­cause we’ve been re­pressed so long. The regime has been so puni­tive, so pro­hi­bi­tion­ist, that just this lit­tle glim­mer of no ar­rest, it seems to be some­thing to cel­e­brate,” but she was far from con­vinced that the bills were pro­gres­sive enough to fos­ter the de­vel­op­ment of a cannabis in­dus­try in this coun­try.”

She added: “What the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has in fact done is shack­led us. He is say­ing, on one hand, he is free­ing up the jails, he is free­ing up the po­lice ser­vice but at the same time with these claus­es, he is putting re­straints still on pro­duc­tion.”

She felt that based on what had been de­vel­oped in for­eign ter­ri­to­ries, the ini­tial of­fer­ing from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al seemed lack­ing.

The AG has said that any de­ci­sion to le­galise mar­i­jua­na, would crip­ple the econ­o­my.