Trinidad & Tobago set to introduce legislation to deal with marijuana next year

The Rowley administration in Trinidad & Tobago, complaining that the country has been in an “analysis paralysis”, on Tuesday announced plans to introduce legislation to decriminalize the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi told the Senate that the time had come to debate the issue, as several Caribbean countries have been contemplating legalising the drug for medical and recreational purposes.

He told legislators that the administration would seek to introduce legislation during the first half of 2019.

“It is anticipated that the legislation to address the issue of the decriminalization of marijuana should be laid and dealt with in this House in the period of the first half of 2019,” Al-Rawi told the Senate as he responded to a question from the Opposition Chief Whip Wade Mark.

“We have already begun consultation with the stakeholders and upon having their feedback we intend to hold public events to encourage a wider form of consultation on an issue which has been around long enough” he added. Al-Rawi said that among the stakeholders were members of the medical and legal profession, adding, “we have written about 100 entities and we have received umpteen replies.”

Last week, St Vincent & the Grenadines became the latest Caribbean country to approve legislation to decriminalize marijuana for medicinal and recreational purposes, and last month, Dominica began a national consultation on the issue.

The chairperson of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Commission on Marijuana, Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, who spoke at the Dominica consultation, called for a change in the region’s cannabis laws. She said following the commission’s two-and-a-half-year public consultation, she had now taken a firm position on the matter.

“I would say I was sitting on the fence, but I want to say upfront that now that the work has been finished and we prepared the report and sent it off to the CARICOM heads of government, I want to say emphatically that I am not sitting on the fence anymore, and after reviewing all of the evidence, looking at all of the laws, listening to people in the region, I am personally committed and quite clear in my mind that the law needs to change,” she said, adding that this change could be through legalisation or decriminalization.

“I personally feel it should be legalisation,” she said. – (CMC)