Friday, May 17, 2024
By LEANDRA ROLLE
Tribune Chief Reporter
lrolle@tribunemedia.net
RASTAFARIANS are unhappy about being required to pay for cannabis licenses, and marijuana advocates believe the Davis administration is letting the black market for marijuana flourish by not comprehensively addressing the recreational use of the drug.
Priest Rithmond McKinney, a leader in the Rastafarian community, and Valentino Elliot, the president of the advocacy group Marijuana Bahamas, reacted yesterday to the compendium of cannabis bills the Davis administration tabled in the House of Assembly on Wednesday.
The bills legalise cannabis for religious purposes by allowing organisations to obtain an organisation licence and letting people get an individual use licence.
However, the initial cost of a religious use licence is $1000, and the non-refundable annual fee is $1000 for organisations and $500 for individuals.
Although Priest McKinney said the bills are a step forward for his community, he said: “I don’t think we should be able to pay a fee for any of those licences, especially for individual and the organisation.
“Once they could prove and know they themselves as Rastafarian, especially the elder rasta who would’ve been through all of the atrocities, then I don’t think they should pay.”
Priest McKinney said officials promised to consult his community further, but did not do so.
Rastafarian leaders had recommended 11 changes to the original draft bills, but most of their recommendations were not accepted. For example, the provision that people convicted of an offence under the Dangerous Drugs Act, the Proceeds of Crime Act, or the Criminal Justice (International Co-operation Act) are ineligible for a licence remains. Rastafarians argue this prevents most members from getting a licence because of the high number of people previously convicted for possessing the substance.
The new bills also mandate that Rastafarian organisations be incorporated as non-profit organisations to obtain a religious organisation licence.
Priest McKinney said his community is prepared to follow this and any other requirement.
“Of course, we have one or two non-profit organisations in the Rastafarian community so we are willing to prepare ourselves and meet any requirement to make sure that we’re in standard with the law going forward to benefit from the bill,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Elliot criticised the government for not widely consulting interested groups and said the proposed regime is not broad enough.
People without a licence who are found with up to 30 grams of marijuana can get a fixed penalty fine of $250. This is the only element of the legislation that concerns the decriminalisation of marijuana possession.
Mr Elliot said: “I think that they need to revamp this and go back to the table and also add some inclusions to this because as it’s just pertaining to medical and religious at this particular point, we’re leaving out some of the major generating factors of it in recreational and industrial and I think we need to be able to tap into those markets a little bit more in order for us to have a solid hold on a particular market that we’re trying to bring on stream.”
“The way the bills are drafted now, it still gives into a particular black market we know to be very present in this day. If it is illegal to sell marijuana or cannabis now, there are still going to be persons that are going to be found selling it and trying to do their own thing.”
He said the government’s decision to ignore the recreational use of cannabis leaves room for many “grey areas.”
“There are going to be some persons who are actually going to try in their own way to see if they can get medical cards, so this is going to be a grey area,” he said.
“The reason why I said it that particular way is because they should’ve opened the door to recreational and single adults use with the inclusion of industrial use, meaning they could’ve done it with some form of limits to it.”
Experts note that countries that decriminalise possession of small amounts of marijuana often start conservatively and liberalise their laws as time passes.
Comments
John says...
The US Department if Justice is currently in the process of reclassifying marijuana from a most g dangerous drug category to a less dangerous drug. And so yesterday, US President, Joe Biden stated that no person will go to jail for possessing or smoking and normal amounts of marijuana.
.
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So what does that mean for the Rastafarian? Well once the drug is declassified is a class A drug, more and more people will be willing to take their chances with it. Meaning less and less people will be willing to shell out large amounts for marijuana licenses. So government will have to either reduce the fees and the requirements or the Black market will take over
Posted 17 May 2024, 4:14 p.m. Suggest removal
JackArawak says...
what do you mean "the black market will take over"? That's all we have now.
Posted 18 May 2024, 6:55 a.m. Suggest removal
Topdude says...
Absolutely short sightedness on the part of the Government, the next thing the Rastafarians and the Advocacy Group Marijuana Bahamas will argue for is a marijuana user fee subsidy for the unemployed, underprivileged and incarcerated. When will this madness end? I can envision after this non carefully thought through marijuana legalization folly starts to impact on the normalcy in citizen behavior the next Government will have to do a lot of backtracking and return to putting back in place those laws as they were before this drug was legalized. The USA will rue the day they introduced the de criminalization of this drug.
Posted 20 May 2024, 2:31 p.m. Suggest removal
mandela says...
The Marijuana Black market is what is going on now, it's called illegal, so this would just continue. Business as usual
Posted 17 May 2024, 10:06 p.m. Suggest removal
John says...
Well it has been the case in most of the 25 plus US states that have legalized marijuana. Many claim that the ‘quality’ of unregulated marijuana is better and cheaper and it is a case of ‘illegal weed chasing away legal weed.’ The point is once marijuana is declassified as a category A drug more people will be willing to take a chance ‘handling’ it. And since it will no longer be considered ‘high risk’ the price will obviously fall. So government El definitely realize less revenue from licensing fees and taxed if some adjustments are not made.
Posted 18 May 2024, 1:36 p.m. Suggest removal
John says...
According to YS President Biden, marijuana should never been made illegal and never classified as a ‘Class A’ dangerous drug. So yes it is a Black market. A market intentionally designed to exploit and criminalize and jail Black people. Black folk were using marijuana for religious purposes, for medical purposes and as s sedative before it was made illegal. The US collapsed tge entire a Jamaican economy and devalued its dollar because it refused to sign on to the US drug extradition treaty. Now the US is probably one of the largest growers of marijuana with it being legal in only half of its states.
Posted 19 May 2024, 10:52 a.m. Suggest removal
hrysippus says...
RasFari unhappy with the Babylon fee;
For growing a weed that they grow for free.
Sheriff John Brown always hated me.
For what, I don’t know?
Every time I plant a seed,
He say kill it before it grow.
Too Much of our money the gubmint need,
A bottomless pit of fiscal greed.
Posted 18 May 2024, 9:14 a.m. Suggest removal
John says...
An easy fix to this: hint posession of small amounts of Marijuana will be decrimilize in The BaHAMAS. Joe Biden says once Marijuana is reclassified, ‘no one will go to jail for possessing or smoking regular amounts of marijuana.’ This means the reclassification by the DOJ will make a lot of tge laws this late Bahamian Government is trying to leglislate obsolete. Once marijuana becomes fully legal in the US it will be likewise here. On what grounds can this government claim it a dangerous substance if US says No, not so!’ Unless they want to continue to discriminate against the Rastafarian and the Black people in general
Posted 18 May 2024, 1:44 p.m. Suggest removal
Topdude says...
As more places legalize marijuana, policymakers and health officials have worried about the health risks that the drug may pose to adolescents. But a new study suggests that an additional demographic is at risk: seniors.
The study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamain…), found that after Canada legalized marijuana, the number of emergency room visits for cannabis poisoning rose sharply among people ages 65 and older. Poisonings doubled after Canada legalized sale of the cannabis flower, and the
n tripled just 15 months later, when Canada legalized the sale of edibles.
Posted 21 May 2024, 8:49 a.m. Suggest removal
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