By Robert Hart, Staff ReporterGOVERNMENT SENATOR, Professor Trevor Munroe, is running out of patience with the long-running parliamentary debate on the legalisation of marijuana.
Speaking during Wednesday's sitting of the Joint Select Committee on the Report of the National Commission on Ganja, Senator Munroe said it has taken almost three decades and three Joint Select Committees for Parliament to reach its current and still indecisive position on the drug.
"With the greatest of respect to participatory democracy, of which I am and remain an unapologetic advocate, we should not confuse participatory democracy with gross indecision, indecisiveness, and failure to implement what has been a consensus for 26 years," said the Senator.
MOVED RESOLUTION IN 1999
It was Professor Munroe who, in 1999, had moved the resolution that called for the Ganja Commission to be established.
In an impassioned plea to the committee Wednesday, he asked that the seven recommendations outlined by the Ganja Commission be accepted and sent to Parliament for the next phase of the debate.
The current committee is the second to look into those recommendations as the first was dissolved at the end of the 2002/2003 parliamentary year.
Senator Munroe traced the history of the legalisation debate back to the first report from a Joint Select Committee that included Senators Winston Spaulding, Karl Rattray and Septon Johnson.
At that time, both sides of the political divide had reached consensus and a report was issued on December 12, 1977, in which the committee came to the conclusion that decriminalisation for private personal use should be implemented.
According to Senator Munroe, Parliament accepted the findings of the report exactly one year later, but the proposed legislation was never implemented.
SLOW IN RESEARCH
Meantime, the People's National Party Youth Organisation (PNPYO), headed by Ganja Committee member Senator Kern Spencer, is also calling on Government to adopt the seven recommendations in principle.
"While other countries are moving steadfastly to reap the benefits (of ganja), Jamaica has been slow, especially in the areas of research," he said in a statement.
"It must be clearly understood that decriminalisation doesn't legitimise the wholesale production and exporting of the drug."
But, during Wednesday's meeting, Opposition Senator Shirley Williams, and Dr. Ken Baugh, Opposition spokesman on health, argued against sending the recommendations to Parliament without further examination.
Among the recommendations made by the commission are the amendment of the relevant laws so that ganja be decriminalised for the private, personal use of specific quantities by adults, and as a sacrament for religious purposes, and a proposed Cannabis Research Agency.
