Rastafari Council calls on gov’t to set up marijuana commission

The Guyana Rastafari Council is calling on the government to immediately implement the mandate of the last Caricom Heads of Government meeting for each member state to set up a National Marijuana Commission to complement the Regional Marijuana Commission which is to review decriminalizing marijuana for medical, religious and recreational purposes.

This was among several resolutions passed at the Council’s last AGM held on August 24 at the FE Pollard School, the group said in a press release. The meeting also “endorsed the work of the Guyana Reparations Committee in coming up with the correct historical narrative for Guyana, among other things, as part of the Caricom Reparations Claim.”

Members were also concerned about the general allocation of land in Guyana and are calling on members of the Rastafari community to utilize the land in more organic agricultural pursuits for food security, particularly in the light of recent concerns about genetically-modified seeds and foods entering the local food chain.

The Council is about to start the process of building its headquarters in Georgetown and developing an agricultural project on the outskirts of Linden. “The pioneering community organization will be holding its Annual General Meeting (AGM) and election of new office bearers on Sunday, December 21, 2014,” the statement said. The new executive will be responsible for coordinating a Regional Rastafari Conference on Reparations and Repatriation in the first half of 2015, as part of the Caricom Reparations Commission’s agenda that is part of the mandate of the United Nations’ International Decade for Peoples of African Descent.