ONLINE FEEDBACK

Below are edited excerpts from comments posted online at www.jamaica-gleaner.com by readers to yesterday's lead story 'Smoking debate - cigarette imports up as ganja production drops'.

Tax them heavily!

There is no fairness in Carreras pressuring the Jamaican authorities while Trinidad blocks the importation of our products. Cigarettes and other smoke products should be taxed heavily. It's bad for our health and only serves to further burden our already-crumbling health system.

That's were the focus of this article should be, and not about the hurt our Trinidadian neighbours are experiencing.

- Realtruth

Grow hemp

Why doesn't the Government allow the growing of hemp in Jamaica? It would benefit farmers financially. The world market is growing. Hemp can be used for so many things. Ganja farmers can easily switch to growing hemp and no longer be criminals.

The export of legal hemp would bring millions into the Jamaican economy. Belize has turned hemp into big business for that tiny country. Think about it.

- Tom T

Follow California's lead

Tourist still come to Jamaica for the best herbs at the price of peanuts. Less than US$1 can buy a spliff. It is our way of life for recreational use in Jamaica, and we kill each other over it, at America's command, while Americans are realigning themselves socially with the decriminalisation of marijuana.

Rastas in California now have federal agents examining their ganja farms and regulating it on private lands for sale legally to the public. It is the biggest legal cash crop in California.

- Binghiman

Plant food instead

If marijuana is the answer to tourists coming to Jamaica, and to solve our 'problems', we are in trouble. Plant food, not marijuana!

I am not a Rasta and I do not disrespect Rasta or anyone else, but Rastas have to stop thinking as if they represent Jamaica and should dictate how we live.

- Vass

Legalise it

I hope the decline in ganja is not perceived as any accomplishment. It is a travesty on local ganja farmers to be destroying their crops, aided and abetted by North America, while they nurture theirs.

This great medicinal plant is used in treating glaucoma, as a pain relief in cancer patients and other uses. There is no doubt that some of Bob Marley's songs were inspired by this great herb. I can never understand how the growing of a plant can be illegal. Legalise it.

- Leobennz