EDITOR, The Tribune

IN the coming months here in the Bahamas “white” men are poised to run huge marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big. Big money, big businesses, selling weed, dope or whatever you may want to call it, after 50 years of locking up impoverished young and old black Bahamians for selling this same product.

Their families and future destroyed. Now “white” men are planning on getting rich doing precisely the same thing young black men did, that destroyed their lives, unable to travel to the USA, unable to get any good meaningful job. As many of your readers know I am on several marijuana boards, and am a known proponent of medical marijuana as long as it benefits the patient who has no other alternative or option of getting better and recovering from their illness.

My judgment is that at this time I am a bit leery about the recreational use and should be placed on the back burner until the medical marijuana issue is running smoothly, however, I know recreational will eventually come, it is just a matter of time. However, I say and say it loud, that if passed by the present government, they should expunge all records of convicted persons who were caught with a joint, a seed in their car ash tray, having a smoking pipe on their person. Expunging should go back at least 25 years, this would most radically empty the overcrowded prison, bring sanity to its everyday running, improve health issues at the facility, reduce stress from the lives of the guards, and give the youth a second chance at life.

Would you be surprised to know some current and former politicians, MP’s, senators at least tried marijuana at one point in their lifetime. It did not make them monsters, yet today those are the same men and women making our laws, and bringing justice to the courts.

There has been talk for some time of Bahamian politicians already heavily invested in marijuana farms in foreign companies, if this is true I cry shame and holla “hypocrite!” There are a countless number of Bahamians that have been using medical marijuana before I was born for medical purposes, and countless numbers still using it in 2018. There is a good chance that an older member of your family has been using marijuana as a tea and for various ailments. As a child you don’t dare question a grandmother or parent from old school asking what they are giving you, you simply drank it.....am quite sure some form of marijuana was included in some of those drinks grandmother prescribed for you.

Make it legal, let the government control it, tax it to bring in revenue, this would stop the average citizen from making ghost moves at midnight from going out and trying to find a dime bag of weed for glaucoma or to ease some form of pain.

DR DEREK PINDER ND; PHD

Naturapath

Nassau

November 19, 2018