Examine pros and cons first

THE use of marijuana and the decriminalisation of the herb have been hot topics in recent months, with calls by advocates to go even further and have it legalised.

Last week the All Mansions of Rastafari (AMOR) organisation went one step further and and called on Government to legalise its use and expunge the records of those convicted for possession of marijuana. Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi will hold public consultations on the issue from January 23.

Psychiatrist and vice president of the Medical Board of TT Dr Varma Deyalsingh said there were advantages and disadvantages to marijuana use. Speaking with the Newsday, he said the board had no formal position on the issue. He said he could not speak for the board on the subject, as it was a body that monitored and licensed doctors.

He said globally there has been a thrust to decriminalise marijuana and medical claims that patients had benefited from medicinal marijuana in certain anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCDs), pain relief, nausea, and pain and nausea associated with cancer.

However, he said there were bound to be side effects. “If everyone was able to get marijuana and use it, you find that two things can happen. “Marijuana is linked to an increased incident of psychotic episodes in people prone to psychosis. If someone has a psychotic illness, the marijuana can trigger that in certain individuals.

“We have to look at the situation where we will be getting psychotic episodes where they use the marijuana and they lose contact with reality. They suffer from these delusions and they are basically tripping. Let us say you have more people coming with psychotic episodes: what is the challenge here?

“Countries abroad have a system where the ambulance service and their back-up systems as such, if they see somebody walking the road naked or walking around with all these delusions and are getting aggressive and violent, you have a better back-up system where you can apprehend that person and put that person in a mental institution.”

Deyalsingh said, in TT this was challenging because of the number of socially displaced people on the streets “and when you are calling for police or back-up to remove them, you are not getting those things. “If the marijuana usage increases and it causes more psychotic episodes we will now be putting a strain in the system which is already not running efficiently.”

RUM MORE
HARMFUL

He added, however, that a benefit of decriminalisation would be the freeing up the overburdened courts which have to deal with someone arrested for a joint. Deyalsingh said alcohol has much more harmful effects.

“Marijuana is safer than the alcohol. If you know that alcohol is causing about 20 per cent of road fatalities, and is contributing to domestic violence, causes dysfunctional families and stress in families, why not see if we can put a greater amount of restriction on the alcohol use, if we are going to think about letting up the marijuana use, in terms of increasing the age of alcohol use to 21.”He said the authorities should also monitor why people needed to reach out to psychotropic substances. “Obviously something is happening in the society...people need to de-stress.” Dr Fuad Khan said before the government legalised marijuana, it should decriminalise it for use in small quantities.

“You can use it as medical marijuana, under two-three grammes. When you legalise something you can run the risk of it being used for trafficking. We are calling for the decriminalising based on the small quantity. You can do legislation to do that. “There is another aspect of legalising something. You make it less attractive to traffic, so they are two sides of the same coin. We are indicating that you decriminalise it first, so people who have small amounts like one or two joints, the whole household will not have to go down when the police get a joint in a house or a car. If you legalise it you decrease trafficking, because it would not be as attractive, same as with alcohol during prohibition.”

COMPELLING CALL

Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General Fitzgerald Hinds said the call to legalise marijuana was a compelling one, but the Cabinet and Parliament would have to agree. There is a significant difference between decriminalisation and legalisation, he explained.

“Decriminalisation is just to make what were criminal offences non-criminal. “With legalisation, people are free to plant as much as they want, use as much as they want. It is just not illegal again, just like flour or lettuce. What was an illegal drug is now legal. You can grow and package as you want.”

But, he said even in that environment it still had to be regulated. “Look at cigarettes it is not illegal but it has to be regulated. You can’t sell it to children, you can’t advertise it, because you know there are dangers around tobacco. Alcohol is not illegal, but it has to be regulated, otherwise you would have babies drinking it.”

Hinds said the government would be using the Caricom report on marijuana on legalisation, decriminalisation and research and medicinal use of marijuana.