Selective legalization of marijuana in Guyana?

Feb 04, 2014 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
I refer to the caption in the Stabroek News dated 22nd January, “Security expert urges selective legalizing of ganja as part of drug response”. I take a very firm stance on the legalization of marijuana/cannabis for reasons I’ll expound on in this letter.
It was in 1993, and I had been completing postgraduate studies in law and criminal justice policy at the London School of Economics, University of London. I had also been working on a mixed sex high secure mental health unit in South London. The unit‘s thirty patients were all young men and women diagnosed with varying  mental health conditions, such as drug-induced psychosis, catatonic  schizophrenia, manic depression, bi-polar disorder,  paranoid personality disorder, poly-substance related disorder, schizoaffective disorder, cannabis dependence and many more.
Some had very serious criminal convictions. On one occasion a relative of a patient had smuggled a ‘stash’ of cannabis in the unit. I seized the cannabis from the patient, and I was to pay very dearly for that action two days later, when three heavily-built patients waited until I was alone and pounced on me. One held me in a vice-like head and arms lock, another had his hands around my neck and the third proceeded to deal heavy blows around my body. The five members of staff on the unit at that time tried and failed to dislodge the men who had been attacking me.
Staff summoned support from contiguous units and the Police.  Fifteen members of staff had been unable to dislodge the three men from attacking me. It took the Police – who created quite a stir with their batons and riot shields – fifteen minutes to bring an end to what would have certainly resulted in my death. There was no pepper spray in use either by the Police or by staff at mental health units in the 1990s. Today, such an episode would be contained within a mere two minutes.  I was to learn from my experiences working at that secure unit that when drug addicts are deprived of their ‘fix’ the risk of serious harm to staff and to members of the public increases.
There is increased pressure from big drug companies in Europe and the USA who see a lucrative marijuana/cannabis market in the Caribbean to legalize certain drugs. This is part of a global campaign– in which certain drug companies and venture capitalists have a vested interest, since they stand to make billions of dollars from the sale of marijuana/cannabis and ecstasy and other drugs if they were to be legalized.
The big drug companies obviously don‘t care a damn that marijuana/cannabis use inevitably culminates into poly-substance misuse and abuse. Many of today‘s cocaine and ecstasy abusers were initially marijuana/cannabis users. Marijuana/cannabis use is the staging post for poly-drug misuse. Drug–induced psychosis, schizophrenia and paranoid personality disorder are also linked to sustained marijuana/cannabis abuse.
Some acquisitive property offending and other youth-based offending behaviour are linked to substance misuse. Many young people who steal from shops, commit burglary and robbery, do so to feed a substance misuse habit. Criminal offending is also a feature of the networks within which cannabis/marijuana use occurs.
Substance use causes disengagement with education, training and employment; an increase in interpersonal violence, such as domestic violence, homicide and femicidal killings and cognitive behavioural disinhibition. Sustained marijuana/ cannabis abuse impairs visuospatial perception, fine motor coordination and perceptual reasoning and planning abilities. Hence violence and substance abuse go hand-in-hand.
The legalization of marijuana/cannabis would lead to more people using it, more addiction, more antisocial behaviour, more disease and death, more violence and more disorder and chaos in Guyana and greater risk of serious harm to the general public. Marijuana/cannabis abuse is already a scourge in many villages. Instead of legalization, marijuana/cannabis should be reclassified as more harmful because there is now sufficient empirical evidence that it triggers psychosis and schizophrenia.  The most effective response to marijuana/ cannabis use is enforcement/criminalization and treatment. Guyana needs to train more substance use professionals
The Netherlands can be used as a classical example for all those who quite misguidedly call for the legalization of marijuana/cannabis in Guyana. As the Dutch relaxed the rules on marijuana/cannabis, the use and abuse of cocaine, heroin, MDMA (ecstasy) increased significantly, along with the crime rate.
Contrary to pronouncements by some respected world leaders and others, marijuana/cannabis is a potent and very dangerous substance. The affective dimensions of marijuana/ cannabis misuse/abuse are irreversible impairment to certain neurological functions, disorientation of memory and thought processes, psychosis, chronic demotivation, panic attacks and aggression. Male marijuana/cannabis abusers also experience a low sperm count.
The children of female abusers are highly likely to be diagnosed with autism, asperger’s syndrome and other learning disabilities. The Americans have suddenly realized that a bellicose and gung ho attitude towards drug trafficking and drug use will never work. Legalization is currently being mooted as the possible solution to smash the violent profits that come with trafficking and that too wouldn‘t work.
A scene from Dante‘s Inferno awaits us, should we legalize marijuana/cannabis. Here we are, experiencing unprecedented levels of violence, some of which can explained by the many changes around us.  Today in Guyana we have ex-offenders from at least two of the world’s most violent countries as a substantial component of our general population and we have thriving trade in drug trafficking. Wherever there is drug trafficking, there are guns. Wherever there are ex-offenders who have experienced the brutality of foreign prisons, there are guns.
Yet with so much potential for violence in Guyana, there is no multiagency criminal justice framework to manage potential risk of serious harm to the public in the form of Multiagency Public Protection Arrangements.  Domestic violence and intimate femicides continue unabated, but yet there is no multiagency framework in place in the form of a Multiagency Risk Assessment Conference, which is a forum where many practitioners meet and discuss strategy to manage risk of serious harm to victims and potential victims of domestic violence. The Police would be expected to take the lead in many multiagency meetings, but given the tattered image of the Guyana Police Force, they would find it difficult to muster the required professionalism at these meetings.
Instead of a viable criminal justice system, we have a colonial era juridico–cultural dinosaur. We also have a poorly resourced mental health system and very few trained substance misuse workers. Legalization of marijuana/cannabis in Guyana would unleash mental health, criminal justice and other challenges that we are not fully resourced and equipped to handle. Our priority must be to address the escalation of violence and drug trafficking.  Hence the way forward would be to erect a multiagency inter-agency framework where social workers, the Police, teachers, probation officers and others can work collaboratively in managing increasing risk of serious harm to the general public and increasing risk of vulnerability to women and children.
Joseph B. Collins

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