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alexk
Guest
The first local public consultation on the issue of the decriminalisation and possible legalisation of marijuana is expected to be held as early as next month.
This was the key outcome as cannabis activists met with Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi and Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs Fitzgerald Hinds for around two hours yesterday.
Yesterday’s meeting was facilitated after Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley received a petition from Caribbean Collective for Justice (CCJ) head Nazma Muller which featured 10,000 signatures calling for the legalisation of marijuana.
Muller and her team, including criminologist Darius Figueira, CCJ director Denise Carew, Colin Stephenson, co-founder of T&T’s first incorporated marijuana law reform NGO, C420, and media personality Joshua Seemungal attended the meeting.
Speaking to the T&T Guardian after the meeting, Muller was pleased at the outcome.
“It was a productive meeting, we are going to cooperate and collaborate on the consultation so that the process can move forward and so that all stakeholders get a chance to air their views, including the medical fraternity, the drug rehab people and the church people,” Muller said.
Muller called on the public to come out to the consultations so that “everybody can have a chance to have their say on a policy that is very radical”.
She said the group is working on having the first consultation in the third week of August.
“The CCJ is pleased, at least we have brought things on to the frontburner. It is now being dealt with as a priority and we are satisfied with that and we move forward in good faith because we want to see T&T progress, we want peace and a reduction in the crime rate, which we think this will do,” Muller said.
Previously, the Government had denied a request from the Caricom-appointed commission established to look at the issue of the reform of marijuana laws in the region, when they sought to have national consultations on the issue here.
Speaking after yesterday’s meeting, however, Al-Rawi said Government needed to have criminal justice reform in place before the consultations could be held here.
“So the place and space to have this discussion could not have happened from a governmental perspective before that criminal justice focus was given,” Al-Rawi said.
Al-Rawi said the Government has spent the last two years focusing very heavily on our criminal justice system, including a fast-track court. He said the country is now ready for the discussion on legalisation of marijuana to take place.
One of the things the CCJ is lobbying for as part of the legalisation of marijuana is recognition for Rastafarians who use it as a sacrament. Muller said the timing of the meeting was perhaps divine given that it occurred the day after 126th birthday of former Ethiopia Emperor Haile Selassie I.