Dawn Ritch, Contributor
I DON'T know how old Lynn M. Pierce from Sauk Rapids U.S.A. is, but she's a girl after my own heart.
In a letter to the editor she said she'd visited Jamaica for the first time in January last year, and was hell bent on coming back in January 2006, but she was having a hard time reconciling the good time she had, with the statistics she's reading now about 845 murders alone since January 2005.
Ms. Pierce suggests slavish obedience to U.S. guidelines on marijuana are killing this country. "Could it be," she asks "that ganja must be legalised and attention be put on the cocaine trade? ... There are many islands to choose to visit. I have no fear of marijuana dealers but I do fear cocaine dealers. Do not be bullied by U.S. politics. Irie must prevail. Bright blessings."
SCIENTIFIC FACT
May irie indeed prevail. It is a scientific fact that the island of Jamaica grows the best marijuana in the world. I never tire of saying that only the Thai stick from Thailand is in any way comparable to the quality of the ganja grown in Jamaica.
But our Government has allowed the country to be over-run by foreign cocaine dealers and their Jamaican cohorts, their guns and rough behaviour. This is a great pity. It's not the mellowed-out point of view Jamaicans previously had, and for which we were justifiably and gloriously renowned worldwide.
I first tried marijuana 40 years ago as a student at university in Canada. That's where I tried coffee and Turkish hashish for the first time as well. Since then, I've been a coffee drinker, and have smoked Colombian Gold and Mexican Red, and only this year while abroad, tried high-grade American marijuana.
Their ganja looked a little fishy to me. It had the general appearance of live, iridescent seaweed. But they assured me it was cured, so I smoked it. When I did eventually get high, it was two minutes of confusion, then it was gone. Most unpleasant.
Why bother?
Jamaicans who live in Jamaica don't understand the effect upon a foreigner of seeing a scandal-bag full of ganja buds. Such a quantity has an aroma much stronger than six pounds of freshly-roasted coffee beans. Only a lit cigar of impeccable quality can compare.
MARIJUANA AND COFFEE
Cuba has the cigars. We have the marijuana and the coffee. You would have thought it was a match made in heaven. But the U.S. doesn't like Cuba, and they have a prohibition on pot, prejudices not shared by the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe.
What I've never understood is how an Australian tourist woman in Indonesia was convicted for carrying drugs into the country. One would have thought she might be carrying them out, but taking them in, really. So it seems like an egregious set-up to me, and a terrible travesty of justice.
The United States long ago instituted a policy of drug-testing employees in critical or sensitive areas. It went from aeronautical and other top-secret installations to use American private-sector companies. Yet there's never been more treachery, spying and corruption in America.
Ganja lasts in the blood stream for six months. Only valium lasts as long. I was not surprised therefore to hear U.S. National Public Radio announce two weeks ago, that a current study shows that more than half the American population has suffered from mental illness or depression at some time in their lives. They didn't say what kind of study, but I'm sure it has to be blood tests and privileged information. And now they've gone and told Bin Laden. Poor George Bush. The faint-hearted have entered the Voice of America and taken over.
The U.S. President therefore has his hands full. So we better get Richard Branson's Virgin airlines to fly into Jamaica, and decriminalise the possession of marijuana post-haste.
LOSING BATTLE
We can never win the war against the cocaine dealers, not even the U.S. can. Just look at America's horrendous expenditure, their national jail record (the highest per capita number of people in jail of any country worldwide) and the slaughter on these, our own shores as we refuel their boats.
I believe that Jamaica wouldn't even have to export ganja in the beginning. We just have to warn all the tourists. Put written notices in every room that it can only be consumed within these shores. And remind them of U.S. customs and blood tests.
Every hotel room in Jamaica would be full, every commercial air carrier coming in, and our two airports packed with charter flights from everywhere in the world except Thailand.
Every business dreams of 'Barriers to Entry'. Yet here, in marijuana, Jamaica has one, and doesn't want to exploit it. If we could do that, as well as show some respect to very wealthy foreign individuals who have private planes, by not charging them duty on their wine and champagne, there would be an orderly economic boom in the country overnight.
It would replace the guns of cocaine with the country we once knew 50 years ago. The only prohibition in Jamaica should be that ganja cannot be smoked wherever cigarette smoking is prohibited, or cigars.
This is the tourism and agriculture Jamaica should be enjoying. But we're in the grip of petty bourgeois intellectuals who think ganja is just for gardeners. They also believe that the U.S. is boss, when they should be asking the British to make Jamaica a base for their navy to help us keep Colombian and United States drug boats out of our waters.
Every fishing beach in Jamaica, and they're always the most beautiful in the island, should only sell fish and common or garden variety ganja. Let's get out of the cocaine transshipment business, as Ms. Pierce so meaningfully suggests. It makes us followers in our own yard instead of the masters of it.
