LETTER OF THE DAY - Legalise ganja - we need the profit
Published:Tuesday | September 3, 2013 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
When I look back to the days of sailing ships and think that in Jamaica then we were more self-sufficient than we are now, in spite of our access to new technology and speedy transportation, I find it quite deplorable.
Every little thing that we could so easily be making here, including 'craft' items to sell to the tourists, is now made and flown in from China. Our traditional crops are now grown and flown in from the US and other countries. Why have we become so lazy and unimaginative and allow ourselves to be dictated to by foreigners rather than leading the way ourselves?
Is not Jamaica the island, the place most associated with 'the herb' - the herb which to many on our island is a sacred sacrament? The religion of Rastafari, which has spread worldwide, began right here on our shores in a place not far from Kingston called Pinnacle, under the guidance of a man named Leonard Howell.
The inspiration of the religion is much derived from the use of marijuana, which we rightly call ganja, as it was brought in by Indian indentured labourers hundreds of years ago.
The Rastas who smoke it, the non-Rastas who smoke it, and the hippies who came in droves from the 1970s onwards to smoke it, all have added to the picture of Jamaica as a forerunner in advocating the euphoric sensation associated with peace that it brings.
This does not mean there are not a lot of people who neither use nor like the effects of ganja, any more than there are teetotallers and people who do not smoke cigarettes, so to them, this argument does not matter.
In the meantime, we are sitting back and letting the US, the very nation we have been trying to please by making it illegal, change its laws there, now in 16 states.
Please, Madam Portia, I am appealing to you directly, along with the vast majority of Jamaican people, to stop this Prohibition. Everyone knows it will come one day, so why wait? Why not show the world we are still leaders, and not only on the track on the field of sports?
Don't we need the revenue?
SALLY HENZELL