The economic impact of legalised ganja

By McPherse Thompson, Staff Reporter

The Carreras Group, parent company of the Cigarette Company of Jamaica, does not appear to be excited about the prospects of increasing its tobacco business by using ganja as a raw material input if the drug is legalised in Jamaica.

According to a spokesman for the Carreras Group, "we are involved in the legal tobacco business" and hence "it is our view that the debate regarding the legalisation of marijuana in Jamaica is for others to have."

The Carreras spokesman was answering queries from The Sunday Gleaner about the likely economic impact on its business if ganja, the local name for marijuana, was legalised for private, personal use. The company was also asked if it would consider developing an export trade in ganja cigarettes with European countries where it was already legal to use it in small quantities.

The National Commission on Ganja, chaired by Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Professor Barry Chevannes, has recommended that ganja should be legalised for private use by adults, for medicinal purposes and as a religious sacrament.

However, as to the economic impact, Carreras said: "We have not studied the report and cannot therefore comment on the potential issues therein."

If legalised, Jamaica would join a growing number of European countries that have already eased up on bringing criminal sanctions against those who use ganja for private, personal use.

It has also emerged that Jamaica has not been the only country at which the United States Government has turned up its nose over the proposal to decriminalise use of the 'weed'.

Time magazine, in a recent special issue of the Latin American edition, reported that although cannabis (ganja) is still illegal in Europe, with as much as 45 million users there flouting the law, Governments have opted to go easy, and businesses have been capitalising on the move.

If legalised, Jamaica would find itself in the company of the following countries:

Holland, which, according to Time, has 900 cannabis cafes where adults can legally buy five grams of marijuana or hashish;

Britain which has instituted a six-month pilot project in which the police will caution users and seize their dope rather than book them for prosecution;

France and Germany, where local police, prosecutors and judges are allowed considerable discretion to be tolerant;

Belgium, where the Government proposes to make arrests only if marijuana use is "problematic" to the puffer or to others, which includes smoking in front of minors;

Spain, which no longer prosecutes users of any recreational drug, including heroin, as long as they do so privately, and

Portugal, which in July embarked on a decriminalisation approach, giving first-time users of any drug suspended sentences, and consider the 'hooked' as "patients", who are sent to a special drug-dependency board and offered treatment. If this latter group refused treatment they can be fined, sentenced to community service, blacklisted at discos, but not sent to jail, according to Time magazine.

It is only that those countries are all part of the industrialised world, which is probably why they took the decision to liberalise, despite objections from United States President George W. Bush Jnr., that drug legalisation "would be a social catastrophe," Time reported.

Despite the relaxation on prosecution, the magazine said European countries have kept "marijuana possession statutes on the books to conform with a 1988 international convention that prohibits outright legalisation and to avoid the political controversy of changing the law."

However, it is the same 1988 UN Drug Convention that the United States has threatened to use as a basis to deny Jamaica certification as a country making efforts to fight against illegal drugs in accordance with the objectives of the treaty if it went ahead with decriminalisation.

"The U.S, Government will consider Jamaica's adherence to its commitment under the 1988 UN Drug Convention when making its determination under the annual narcotics certification review," embassy spokesman Michael Koplovsky was quoted as saying in a recent statement.

Despite its controversial nature, however, the legalisation of ganja in Europe has been used as a means to curb the trade, among other purposes. According to the Time report, Peter Lilley, former deputy leader of Britain's Conservative Party "caused a stir recently by backing the sale of cannabis in licensed shops for off-premises consumption, just like liquor. The drug would, like booze, carry health warnings and be taxed."

Unlike in Holland, however, it would be procured legally from licensed growers, a situation which the former party leader felt would hurt drug syndicates and help make dope "simply boring" - the same reasons advanced by Swiss officials for a new law permitting legal production of ganja for purchase by Swiss residents.

The six-month experiment currently under way in Britain is expected to save the police at least five hours of work for each non-arrest, which they will devote to street crime and drug dealers.

As in Europe, Jamaicans have flouted the ganja law with impunity. Walk along the streets of downtown Kingston, especially in certain street-side vending areas, and one will find cured ganja neatly stacked on make-shift wooden stalls, with the vendors openly competing with each other, displaying their 'ware' just as they would any other legal commodity.

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