Novembre 2001

Jamaica rethinks marijuana stance

Sidney van Dijk

Jamaica recently is debating on the highest level its policy towards the use of ganja, the local name for cannabis. Jamaicans use ganja since some 150 years. It is widely spread and culturally integrated, in particular among the large and poor lower classes in the cities and on the countryside. As a former colony of the United Kingdom, ganja has been illegal since a long time.
Since a few years a debate has been launched on the question if the drug policy should be liberalized. A half a year ago the Jamaican Senate unanimously agreed with installation of the National Commission on Ganja, which should examine the current ganja question. On the 1st of October of this year the Peoples National Party (PNP) of Jamaica's Prime Minister P.J. Patterson opened the door to such a discussion amongst politicians, when the PNP's National Executive Council decided to support Patterson's demand for a national and parliamentary debate on the possibility of decriminalization of ganja.
This debate is the direct result of the recommendations done in August by the National Commission on Ganja. This commission, installed by the Parliament and lead by professor Barry Chevannes of the University of the West-Indies, takes a very clear standpoint and recommends 'the decriminalization of ganja for personal, private use by adults and for use such as a sacrament for religious purposes'. The commission underlines this private use should not relate to juveniles and by anyone in public places.
The commission also points at the importance of an 'all-media, all-schools education program' in order to reduce the use of ganja. Security forces should direct their attention more intensively to the interdiction of large cultivation of ganja and trafficking of all illegal drugs, especially crack and cocaine.
On an international level the commission urges on the participation of Jamaica in a so-called Cannabis Research Agency, which should coordinate international research on all kind of drug-issues. Jamaica should make an urgent effort to find diplomatic support for decriminalization and also influence the international community to re-examine the status of ganja.
Jamaica is one of the bigger islands in the Caribbean with a population of almost three million inhabitants. The use of ganja has been widespread for many generations. Jamaican ganja is of a high quality and nowadays being smoked as a stimulant on the countryside and in the poor quarters of the cities. Ganja is also used as a medicine, often by drinking leaves of the ganja-plant. It makes your body strong and healthy, they say. Furthermore ganja is used for religious purposes. Rastafari, a religious black awareness-movement founded some eighty years ago by the Jamaican Marcus Garvey, use ganja as the holy herb, smoking it during religious meetings.
Although used at a large scale, ganja is also illegal. In the seventies the cultivation of ganja increased because its export to the United States increased. The US helped security forces in their search for plantations for example by supplying helicopters. The US Reagan administration started the War on Drugs in the eighties and this changed the main drug-trade in Jamaica from the export of ganja to the transit trade of cocaine and crack. Exporting ganja has become more difficult and police and army chase down not only the cultivators of ganja, but also its users. One of the consequences of the commissions recommendation to decriminalize the use of ganja is a change of priority for the security forces: away from ganja and towards cocaine and crack.
Prime Minister Patterson has stated that the recommendations of the National Commission on Ganja and their implications have to be discussed and investigated. The Jamaican room for political manoeuvre is limited, because of the attitude of the US and its War on Drugs. One day after the National Commission on Ganja made its recommendations the US embassy in Kingston declared that Jamaica had to respect the UN drug convention of 1988 and could not liberalize.
The US is Jamaica's main economical partner and Jamaica receives foreign aid from the US. Disturbing the relation, might cause more problems for Jamaica. And of problems Jamaica knows already to much. It is not the ideal island offered in tourist magazines. Jamaica is covered by a large cloud of problems: poverty, wars between gangs in the ghetto's, an enormous foreign depth and more violence. Jamaica is one of the most violent countries of the world especially its capitol Kingston.
Patterson has to act cautiously in respect to the US and for now decriminalization is only a subject of the national debate. Maybe changing the drug-laws is asked to much, but maybe a change of priority in charging ganja use is acceptable. The National Commission on Ganja recommends to get in contact with countries, especially European, which changed their drug-policy in the direction of the decriminalization of ganja use: Holland, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium and the United Kingdom.
Whatever the outcome may be, it is clear that Jamaica is having a national debate on the decriminalization of the use of ganja for personal, religious and medicinal use. The debate is meant to be the fundament for a parliamentary vote later.