There was a time, particularly in the decade of the 1970 when the popularization of marijuana was driven largely by the lyrics of the Jamaican musical icon Bob Marley, particularly in his refrain to the conservative political administrations to ‘legalize it.’ In those days, if you were in Guyana, for example, you could indulge the habit only through resort to the most clandestine of arrangements. In Jamaica it was a good deal easier. There was marijuana to be had aplenty on Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies or in the many ‘speak easy’ joints dotting Kingston.
Marijuana has graduated from being just a mood-altering drug the indulgence in which could land you behind bars to a plant which, primarily because of what has become its known medicinal properties, has become ‘accepted,’ graduating from an ‘illegal drug’ to a commodity the global demand for which has long gone through the proverbial roof and which countries across the world have, in recent years been queuing up to legalize.
It is a trend that has not escaped the attention of potential investors in what was once a widely prohibited drug, not only in metropolitan countries with a reputation for opportunistic investments but also in the Caribbean specifically, in Jamaica.
