Progress on marijuana legislation reform

Jan 29, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Yesterday’s debate in parliament on proposed marijuana legislation reform, if nothing else, a circus of deliberate cognitive dissonance on the part of the political opposition that proposed the amendment bill under discussion, one that fortunately ended in the discarding of the proposed bill and the government sending its own to Special Committee where it hopefully will not languish for an indefinite amount of time.
That parliamentary novice, Sherod Duncan was specifically chosen to champion the doomed amendment bill was clearly part of what has proven to be an increasingly manic stagecraft on the part of a political opposition still trying to dig itself out and rebrand after its failed attempt to rig the 2020 elections. The conceit here is that having not been a member of parliament under the Granger presidency, Duncan would somehow be free of the baggage of that administration’s deliberately curated failure to do what it is posturing to do now.
When it was that opposition Member of Parliament Jermaine Figuiera – who actually served under the previous administration – stated in his presentation that, “To do nothing about cannabis use in the 21st century is to shoot oneself in the foot”, he might as well have been reading the epitaph of the government he was part of, which had promised marijuana legislation reform and then proceeded to do nothing before being voted out of office after a single term. By the time that the 2018 CARICOM report on marijuana much referred to in yesterday’s proceedings had come out, in other jurisdictions, the cases for legalization, decriminalization and removal of custodial sentences were not only made but the reality of regulation and commercialization was well underway. The only thing that consistently stood in the way of moving forward here is the former President’s on the record disdain for actual reform, despite promises to do so.
It was therefore ludicrous therefore that the Parliamentary list headed by Granger would swing from refusing to move forward on one of his own parliamentarian’s proposals while in control of both the executive and a parliamentary majority to putting forward the same proposal while in minority opposition and increasing the threshold for non-custodial possession of marijuana to 500 grammes, or 1.1 pounds. For comparison sake, consider that even the most liberal of jurisdictions limit their thresholds to an average of 56 grammes with New York for example allowing up to 2 ounces (56.699 grammes) without custodial sentencing. In New York, someone in possession of the coalition’s ludicrous one pound of weed proposal would see jail time of four years, or just one year short of the mandatory three-year jail time that prevailed for much smaller amounts for the entire five years that David Granger was president, during which many young persons were sent to jail even though the global tide against marijuana use had definitively shifted by then.
This shows that clearly the proposed amendment bill by the opposition was gamesmanship, a farce meant to distract and detract from a political win by the current government due to an unforced, deliberate error on its part. Political parties are of course permitted to engage in theatre to further their interests and undermine their opponents but there should be limits, particularly when the lives of average citizens are involved. What is even more indecent is that Granger, the person responsible for completely blocking progress on this issue for five years because of his own outdated and banal worldview, is the key author of this farce from whatever bunker he has been hiding in since the final failure of his attempted coup in August of last year. The least he could do is emerge to provide some rationale for why the list under his leadership and his control is pretending to do the opposite of what his government’s de facto position was.
Going forward, the government’s bill having been sent to special committee, what is needed is actual bipartisan deliberation and discussion on this critical piece of legislation, one that transcends social justice, public health, human rights and cultural considerations. This is a first step, one in keeping with what Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport – Charles Ramson in his presentation, referred to in his presentation as a process of “gradualism” in legislative reform, not the end of the journey itself.

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Progress on marijuana legislation reform

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