Customs meddling

It's startling to realise that even at the end of 2024, on the verge of welcoming the end of the first quarter of a new century, the Customs and Excise Division is comfortable dictating matters of morality regarding a product that’s designed to be used in the privacy of a citizen’s bedroom.

The courts are again considering the division’s decision to seize a shipment of adult toys imported for sale to adults.

Customs officer Dwight Questel decided that the items were unlawful despite the absence of laws banning or even limiting the import of adult toys. Justice Avason Quinlan-Williams could not find any law that had been breached.

It’s a discussion that has been ongoing for almost a decade now.

In 2018, the High Court gave Dr Raj Ramnanan leave to challenge the 2017 customs seizure of “adult novelty goods.”

The action followed a warning two months earlier by import courier Websource that a range of items, including adult toys, were prohibited.

In response, Finance Minister Colm Imbert explained that under TT law, an adult toy isn't defined.

“It appears,” he said,” that the relevant section of the law is associated with the words: other indecent or obscene articles or matter.”

Another courier company cited Section 46(g) of the Criminal Offences Act: “Any person who offers for sale or distribution or who exhibits to public view any profane, indecent, or obscene, paper, print, drawing, painting, or representation may be deemed a rogue and a vagabond and, if found liable, to imprisonment for two years.”

Another vendor of the products, Intimate Affairs, asked Justice Westmin James for guidance on the matter, which remains an ongoing source of contention between importers and customs officers.

It requires some legal clarification because these items are neither pornographic nor intended for public display beyond the point of sale.

It is a running issue of moral judgment based on the standards of the customs officer on duty on what constitutes obscenity or indecency in a matter vaguely governed by secular law.

Justice Quinlan-Williams asked Mr Questel if he believed the items would cause citizens to “become morally corrupt, excessively interested in sexual matters, or encouraged to behave inappropriately.”

Arguably, on that basis, soca music and Carnival should also draw official attention.

Broad meddling in adults' decisions and about their bodies is absurd and a slippery slope for the state.

Despite multiple challenges since 2017, Customs and Excise remains wedded to the idea of exercising moral judgment in very personal commercial transactions, seeing threats in plastic genitals while guns continue to slip through the country's borders.