By Robert Hart, Staff ReporterTHE JOINT Select Committee of Parliament examining the use of ganja is set to recommend that Government reclassify the drug, making its use a low-level criminal offence.
The decision, made during yesterday's sitting of the committee, which is looking at the recommendations of the three-year old National Commission on Ganja, came the same day a doctor's union in the United Kingdom expressed concerns about that government's own attempts to downgrade marijuana's status as a drug.
Speaking during yesterday's committee sitting, Solicitor-General Michael Hylton stated that "It would be possible for Jamaica to remove criminal sanctions from the personal use of ganja, as marijuana use does not have to be made subject to criminal sanctions, according to the relevant conventions."
During the last sitting in December, Mr. Hylton had told the committee that any move to decriminalise the use of ganja, even for 'private, personal use', would place Jamaica at odds with the country's international treaty obligations on drug control.
Returning on the request of the committee including Opposition MPs Mike Henry, Delroy Chuck and Dr. Ken Baugh, as well as Government MPs, Dr. Patrick Harris and committee chairman Dr. Morais Guy, the Solicitor-General, yesterday noted that those obligations require criminal sanctions to be applied to the possession, cultivation, transport, and production of ganja.
NON-CUSTODIAL SENTENCES
"(But) in the circumstances it is possible to argue that the possession or cultivation of small quantities of ganja could be subject to reduced, non-custodial, sentences or to fines," Mr. Hylton said. He further suggested that any criminal record could be erased after a short period.
With the suggestion finding general favour within the Chamber, the committee also decided it would recommend that renegotiations take place between Jamaica and its Caribbean Community and European Union partners on the treatment of ganja.
"If we were to be successful in having the treaties exempt the personal use of ganja then it would cover the religious, the medicinal, etc... so that those other things we are discussing would no longer be necessary. That exemption would cure all of that," the Solicitor-General said.
Mr. Hylton added: "I suspect though... because that is both uncertain and may take some time... that there are some who would think that it would be better to, as a companion measure, do some changes in the meantime."
On this point Government member Senator Floyd Morris noted that new literature and information that has emerged, regarding for example, medicinal use could be used as a rationale for the renegotiations.
"I think that would be perfectly in order in making a general approach," he said.
But yesterday, the British Medical Association (BMA) warned that reclassification of the drug could lead some people to believe it is safe. The group was reacting to a UK initiative to reclassify marijuana from a class B to a class C drug on January 29. The goal is to allow police to focus enforcement efforts on harder drugs.
The UK initiative was the primary example given by Mr. Hylton in supporting the reclassification of the drug in Jamaica. The Committee will have its final meeting, to sign off on its report, on February 11.
