Trinidad AG: No full ganja legalisation now

Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi address suppporters during the PNM’s public meeting at the CAL Skiffle Steel Orchestra panyard in San Fernando earlier this week.
Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi address suppporters during the PNM’s public meeting at the CAL Skiffle Steel Orchestra panyard in San Fernando earlier this week.

(Trinidad Guardian) At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says ful­ly le­gal­is­ing mar­i­jua­na now will crip­ple its eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial for the small man.

He made the com­ment on Sat­ur­day night as he de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to choose de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of the herb.

“If you want full le­gal­i­sa­tion now you are crip­pling the eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial of peo­ple that have a chance to ac­tu­al­ly, in a reg­u­lat­ed en­vi­ron­ment, make some progress,” Al-Rawi said.

Al-Rawi made the state­ment as he ad­dressed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Diego Mar­tin.

He said de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na will have a pos­i­tive ef­fect on the de­lays in the coun­try’s courts while al­so hit­ting gangs where it hurts – their pock­ets.

Every year, he said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9,000 cas­es for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion go to the mag­is­trates’ courts.

Al-Rawi said the 86 per cent of the time spent by this coun­try’s foren­sic de­part­ment is al­so spent analysing less than 60 grammes of mar­i­jua­na for court mat­ters, which takes away from more im­por­tant mat­ters.

On Fri­day, Al-Rawi took leg­is­la­tion to the Par­lia­ment for the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na.

The Gov­ern­ment is propos­ing that pos­ses­sion of un­der 30 grammes of mar­i­jua­na will not car­ry a charge. Al-Rawi said 30 grammes of mar­i­jua­na equates to “three large cig­a­rette packs full of mar­i­jua­na.”

The bill re­quires a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage, Al-Rawi said.

“We will en­sure the leg­is­la­tion is done on the floor,” he said.

Al-Rawi said “a large amount of gang ac­tiv­i­ty” in this coun­try is con­nect­ed to mar­i­jua­na.

“In tak­ing the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na for­ward, we have arranged in­stead for the mon­ey that gangs live on to be tak­en away from them,” he said.

“If you make every­thing a free for all how are you go­ing to come up with an en­ter­prise.”