The best life for our youth is to be healthy, happy and not headed to court or jail serving years with criminal records for marijuana. Truly, all of us should want our young people not to use ganja for recreational highs.
We need to carefully examine and deal with factors that lure young people to start smoking in the first instance. Smoking cannabis, as well as tobacco, is present in this island as in many places worldwide. This has an impact on the physical and social health of the smoker short-term and long-term. Collectively, this will determine the health of this nation.
As a people our goal should be to have a drug-free Anguilla. Tobacco free, liquor free, cannabis free and free of all other mind altering drugs except if needed for medical reasons. Adverse effects can occur with synthetic drugs and natural plant drugs.
To be sure, smoking cannabis can damage your health. It varies from person to person but clearly it can cause health problems such as cough, bronchitis, stroke, heart disease, memory problems, anxiety, difficulty learning, psychosis and fertility problems. It is not clear if it causes lung cancer but the smoke contains cancer causing chemicals. This plant, famously touted for ‘the healing of the nations’ does apparently have medicinal properties that seems to benefit some with cancer, HIV/AIDS, glaucoma and epilepsy. Medical marijuana can certainly help us.
It is necessary therefore to maximize the upside and minimize the downside of using this plant. We must not make impulsive legislation that will backfire on our population. ‘Hit and run’ legislation on cannabis will be a massive disservice to Anguillians. We will be left to deal with the consequences.
We should have broad based consultations with parents, parent-teachers associations, education officials and those in health, police, social development, clergy and other sectors. This would have been most useful before exciting some persons that decriminalization of cannabis would be tabled in the House of Assembly in a few weeks.
We need to take the necessary time to address the important issue in its’ broad scope and not with tunnel vision. Other countries have proceeded with great caution on marijuana use and decriminalization issue. The UK is the world’s largest producer and exporter of legal marijuana but have laws that significantly prohibit its’ use by UK residents even if they are sick. This should be a huge warning flag for us here in Anguilla- a UK overseas territory. As we say in Anguilla “a fish dies by his mouth”.
We must explore and develop interventions that prevent people from smoking in the first place. Education helps a lot but is not enough. Tobacco boxes have warning labels but persons light up those cigarettes by the millions. Marketing, social acceptance and addiction are powerful forces. In primary schools the anti-drug DARE program has been running for years so why isn’t it continued into high school? PSHE classes alone will not suffice the years of experimentation students’ can face in high school.
Those who look to popular media for evidence of the medical benefits of cannabis should consider the whole story. For example, Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN who has reported on the medical benefits of marijuana has also featured Seventh-day Adventists especially in Loma Linda, California as being among those who live the longest. Seventh-day Adventists have taught consistently for years not to smoke or drink alcohol.
I totally disagree with the AG who states “I don’t think there is a sufficient case to say that it is such a social harm if a person is only in possession of a small amount of cannabis, and for us to take up so much police time”. Consider the Anguillian in the psychiatric ward and was using cannabis. How many more must be confined there to make a sufficient number- 100 or 1000? Consider the Anguillian young man using his time and strength to grow ganja instead of food. How many more youth must join him before we admit we have a problem? Consider the grandmother who is wrestling and suffering with behavioral problems in her grandchildren who are smoking and there is no rehab center to which to turn? What number of potential delinquents would be sufficient to sound the alarm? Consider our only hospital whose lab cannot and has not been able to screen patients for illicit drugs? How much longer must we be deprived?
Police are human. They can get frustrated and despair. Some young people are no doubt seeing this as a permissive signal that they can smoke their spliffs. How many spliffs can police officers remove from persons before feeling that their efforts are entirely a waste of time? Decriminalization is in my opinion a back-door form of legalization.
Alcohol has given us big blows and we don’t have a rehabilitation center for drinkers needing help. Tobacco has cut down the health of our people and we have a healthcare system on its knees since Hurricane Irma and unable to cope. Let us be careful not to pour fuel on the fire.
Let us ask the Governor to assist with expunging the records of marijuana convicts so they can work and travel. The AG should ask the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, DFID etc to help us with a new modern hospital and a rehab center.
This AG is on his way out of office and perhaps Anguilla. He should leave this matter of marijuana decriminalization for the incoming Attorney General to carefully work on early in his tenure with the Anguillian community.
