EDITORIAL - Was ganja commission high on optimism?

Having a good smoke while surveying the sunset-streaked skyline from a veranda might cause anyone to lose track of time. Which is what has happened to the Jamaican Government, having received a comprehensive report from the Barry Chevannes-chaired National Commission on Ganja.

It has been 11 years on the puff, with little sign - beyond talk - of pressing forward with the progressive recommendations made by that august body.

The smoking of marijuana has been a controversial subject in Jamaican discourse, with a tug of war between advocates for decriminalisation and lobbyists for the maintenance of current legislation.

This newspaper does not equivocate on decriminalisation, as we contend that the decades-old laws proscribing the use and possession of ganja should be moderated to admit small quantities for private, personal use, which is in step with the prescriptions of the Chevannes commission.

The recommendations were based on scientific findings and feedback gleaned from an extensive islandwide survey, including the staging of hearings in public squares and on street corners. Regardless of class, religious and other strata, Jamaicans, generally, believe that state resources could be better used than having police personnel jumping out of SUVs, guns pointed, and carting away mostly young men for a handful of weed.

Praetorian blitzes are best directed at major criminal players who have unleashed mayhem on the society. Incarceration of Jamaicans for minor amounts of marijuna has done nothing more than unnecessarily criminalise a vast sector of our society and further burden a bloated, creaking justice system. It also exposes these young men to interaction with more hardened crooks, thus worsening criminal contagion.

As the commission's report said, "According to many, the jailed ganja offender is often forced into a situation where, unless he exhibits 'bad man' ways, he cannot survive the lock-ups, or where he develops sympathy for hardened criminals or enters into relations with them. Having gone in as a law-abiding person, except for ganja, which no one regards as wrong, he returns a bitter opponent of the rule of law."

Opposition Senator Tom Tavares-Finson understands this. So, too, does Justice Minister Mark Golding. But the wheels of legislation cry for grease.

QUIXOTICALLY HOPEFUL

The Chevannes commission was quixotically hopeful that its report would elicit a more proactive, decisive response from the Jamaican Government than had been shown to previous consultations, dating back to a joint committee of Parliament in 1977.

"The commission is convinced that its recommendations will not go the way of those of all previous commissions and studies, notwithstanding the difficulties that will confront the Government due to Jamaica's ratification of UN Conventions that seek to prohibit cannabis, except for research and medical-scientific purposes."

Since the report was submitted in August 2001, legislators, doctors and others have talked the matter to death. We seek to resurrect the corpse - but for action.

The recommendations, including amendments to the Dangerous Drugs Act, have seemingly been caught in Parliament's penchant for legislative constipation, a malady we have complained about. The House of Representatives still meets once per week, and gets very little done in the core purpose for which parliamentarians are elected - making laws.

We have long pondered the basis of the National Commission on Ganja members' optimism that their report would not be shelved, marking time. Now we suppose their source of hope. Perhaps they were high.

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