The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Chief Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

RASTAFARIANS are unhappy about being required to pay for cannabis licenses, and marijuana advocates believe the Davis administration is letting the black market for marijuana flourish by not comprehensively addressing the recreational use of the drug.

Priest Rithmond McKinney, a leader in the Rastafarian community, and Valentino Elliot, the president of the advocacy group Marijuana Bahamas, reacted yesterday to the compendium of cannabis bills the Davis administration tabled in the House of Assembly on Wednesday.

The bills legalise cannabis for religious purposes by allowing organisations to obtain an organisation licence and letting people get an individual use licence.

However, the initial cost of a religious use licence is $1000, and the non-refundable annual fee is $1000 for organisations and $500 for individuals.

Although Priest McKinney said the bills are a step forward for his community, he said: “I don’t think we should be able to pay a fee for any of those licences, especially for individual and the organisation. 

“Once they could prove and know they themselves as Rastafarian, especially the elder rasta who would’ve been through all of the atrocities, then I don’t think they should pay.” 

Priest McKinney said officials promised to consult his community further, but did not do so.

Rastafarian leaders had recommended 11 changes to the original draft bills, but most of their recommendations were not accepted. For example, the provision that people convicted of an offence under the Dangerous Drugs Act, the Proceeds of Crime Act, or the Criminal Justice (International Co-operation Act) are ineligible for a licence remains. Rastafarians argue this prevents most members from getting a licence because of the high number of people previously convicted for possessing the substance.

The new bills also mandate that Rastafarian organisations be incorporated as non-profit organisations to obtain a religious organisation licence.

Priest McKinney said his community is prepared to follow this and any other requirement.

“Of course, we have one or two non-profit organisations in the Rastafarian community so we are willing to prepare ourselves and meet any requirement to make sure that we’re in standard with the law going forward to benefit from the bill,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Elliot criticised the government for not widely consulting interested groups and said the proposed regime is not broad enough.

People without a licence who are found with up to 30 grams of marijuana can get a fixed penalty fine of $250. This is the only element of the legislation that concerns the decriminalisation of marijuana possession.

Mr Elliot said: “I think that they need to revamp this and go back to the table and also add some inclusions to this because as it’s just pertaining to medical and religious at this particular point, we’re leaving out some of the major generating factors of it in recreational and industrial and I think we need to be able to tap into those markets a little bit more in order for us to have a solid hold on a particular market that we’re trying to bring on stream.”

“The way the bills are drafted now, it still gives into a particular black market we know to be very present in this day. If it is illegal to sell marijuana or cannabis now, there are still going to be persons that are going to be found selling it and trying to do their own thing.” 

He said the government’s decision to ignore the recreational use of cannabis leaves room for many “grey areas.” 

“There are going to be some persons who are actually going to try in their own way to see if they can get medical cards, so this is going to be a grey area,” he said. 

“The reason why I said it that particular way is because they should’ve opened the door to recreational and single adults use with the inclusion of industrial use, meaning they could’ve done it with some form of limits to it.”

Experts note that countries that decriminalise possession of small amounts of marijuana often start conservatively and liberalise their laws as time passes.