Public consultations on decriminalising marijuana

LEGALISE IT: Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi is approached by Haile Ulerie and Jesse Gill of the Caribbean Collective for Justice outside the Parliament on Friday last week .
LEGALISE IT: Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi is approached by Haile Ulerie and Jesse Gill of the Caribbean Collective for Justice outside the Parliament on Friday last week .

GOVERNMENT and the Caribbean Collective For Justice (CCFJ) have agreed there should be public consultations about the decriminalising of marijuana. As a result of this, a note will be taken to Cabinet to propose the establishment of an inter-ministerial committee that will organise town hall meetings to discuss the issue. This was disclosed by CCFJ leader Nazma Muller after a near two-hour long meeting between Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi, Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs Fitzgerald Hinds and CCFJ representatives at the ministry in Port of Spain yesterday.

Muller said the CCFJ has “measured optimism” that this approach will ensure an outcome which satisfies everyone. The Prime Minister instructed Al-Rawi and Hinds to meet with the CCFJ yesterday. Last Friday, Dr Rowley received a petition to decriminalise marijuana from Muller before he attended a sitting of the House of Representatives. Before the meeting, Al-Rawi said, “This is the beginning of a discussion because we are now respectfully ready for that discussion.”

He explained the PM’s recent statement that priorities had to be taken in the context of Government’s focus on improving the criminal justice system. Al-Rawi said all systems in the world which have dealt with the decriminalisation or legalisation of marijuana, did so based “upon the concurrent piece of work which is criminal justice reform.”

Citing 102 people before the courts for maximum sentence indication and two special criminal courts for children as examples, Al-Rawi said the “place and space” has been created to discuss the decriminalising or marijuana.

However he made it clear this does not mean that everyone “who is engaged in a dangerous drug automatically gets a walk-out-of-jail card.” Al-Rawi said the country remains in a narco-trafficking arena and there is “serious criminality associated with some of these affairs.”

Saying the approach Government is taking is similar to the one it took on abolition of child marriages, Al-Rawi said, “Our country has its own idiosyncrasies which must be factored into this equation.” With Government and later Parliament having to consider possible legislative changes, Hinds agreed that public consultation was important.

He said the CCFJ should not assume that “everyone has as full an understanding of the issues as it might have.” Muller said the group was presenting a “rock solid case” to the Government. She said the case was coming from a perspective of legal research, social, medical and spiritual factors.

Referring to statistics provided by Al-Rawi, Muller said there were “3,000 males arrested last year for possession of cannabis.”

This, she continued, factors into a cost of $20,000 to $25,000 per month to maintain a prisoner, potentially lessening an overburdened judicial system by 40 per cent and 11 per cent of remand prisoners being incarcerated for narcotics possession. Muller said the recommendations of the Caricom Commission on Marijuana are clear. She added these were, decriminalising marijuana, legislation with strict controls as with alcohol and tobacco or total legalisation where “we allow the private sector to take control with oversight from the Government.”

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