‘Defend Your Rights’ – says Carl Olsen

“Our main problem is that we don’t defend the rights we already have. We keep asking for more rights.”

A conversation with CARL OLSEN, former member of the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church, now an internationally known advocate for marijuana law reform, and an unstoppable force for legalization in his home State of Iowa. He says it’s all because of the Coptics, that band of Black and White outlaws who fought the Ganja Wars of the 1970s in Jamaica and the USA.

Q: What did you gain from being a member of the Coptics?

CO: On Monday, I’m meeting with state officials to discuss marijuana and its legalization on sacramental grounds, and I feel comfortable doing that because of my association with the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church. I’m aware that the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church was an economic force in Jamaica, but that is not what I thought about when I became a member of the group. To me, it was all about marijuana and fellowship with others who felt the same way. I was a drug abuser when I met the brothers and sisters of the Church and it because obvious to me that chemical poisons and plants are not the same thing. If there is a plant that can get you high, then why take the poison?

As I learned more about the Church, it also because apparent that they made a lot of health choices about lifestyle. Probably the biggest benefit for me was that I lost my fear of being in large groups. All of that influences and shapes who I am today.

That whole Coptic thing is hard to explain. You had to be there when it was going on to really get it, and even then it wasn’t easy to understand. You could just feel the power in the congregation and that isn’t happening any more. It came and went. I was only in Jamaica for a brief period. The ganja made the whole experience intense and I haven’t used ganja since 1990.

Q: Do you keep up with developments in Jamaica’s ganja legalization movement? How do you see the revision of our Dangerous Drugs Act to allow some growing for medical use? We are still restricted by the international treaties. Does Jamaica have to wait for the US to change the treaties?

CO: I see what is going on in Jamaica, but my take on this is that I am back where I started because there was a message I needed to take back home from the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church. Things won’t be right in Jamaica until we get this right in the United States. The United States wrote these international treaties and plays a big role in them. Jamaica can’t be the outlaws and gangsters on the international stage, as glamorous as that might appear to some. Marijuana has to be normalized globally and accepted by all.

The U.S. is the big cheese in all of this. We wrote the international treaties and adopted them in 1967. But Jamaica is a sovereign nation with its own Constitution. The international treaties recognize the Constitution of the party signing onto the treaty. So, anything Jamaica does that is constitutional in Jamaica is already allowed by the treaties.

For example, the 1961 Single Convention which covers cannabis says in Article 35 Action against the Illicit Traffic: “Having due regard to their Constitutional, legal and administrative systems, …” All those sections say they are “Subject to its Constitutional principles and the basic concepts of its legal system…”

Q: So, if Jamaica wants full legalization like Colorado, the best thing Jamaica should do is cite these Constitutional protections in the international treaties in national legislation, so that it’s not even a question.

CO: Absolutely. When the U.N. Narcotics Control Board accused Uruguay of being out of compliance with the treaties, Uruguay never responded back by defending its actions under the treaties. At least, I didn’t see it, if they did.

The problem is when the U.N. Narcotics Control Board accuses a county of being out of compliance with the treaties, and that nation does not cite the sections of the treaty that protect that nation’s Constitutional actions. If countries don’t defend their rights, it hurts all of us. So, the best thing Jamaica should do is cite these Constitutional protections in the international treaties in national legislation so that it’s not even a question.

Q: So anything Jamaica does is legal, as long as it is Constitutional.

CO: Yes, it’s called “DUE PROCESS”. Our constitution gives us the right to establish a legislative branch and empowers them to make laws. I’m sure it’s the same in every country and, that makes it Constitutional Due Process. Our main problem is that we don’t defend the ri ghts we already have. We keep asking for more rights.

We re-wrote our federal law in 1970 and Iowa enacted its version in 1971. It’s all connected. All three levels have the scheduling. The scheduling was meant to be flexible so the laws they implement would not have to be re-written constantly. The schedules are not being updated as required by law. We don’t need any new laws. We just need the schedules to be kept up to date. That is why I got the Iowa Board of Pharmacy to rule unanimously that the schedules are out of date here in 2010. Our Iowa Senate voted to reclassify 44-0-6 on April 15, 2015.

Q: So you are optimistic?

CO: There is a lot of research going on here and that will continue. Congress legalized the production of hemp earlier this year, so attitudes are shifting. I got requests from two university professors to include my work in the course curriculum this week, one from a sociology professor at the University of Iowa, and the other from a professor of pharmacy at the university where I work. There is also the fact that the entire world is starting to embrace this issue and it’s not as radical as it once was. I feel blessed to be in the center of the discussion.

(c) Barbara Makeda Blake-Hannah

 

RASTA in the New Ganja Industry

I am concerned about the total silence that has greeted the many questions RASTAs are asking about the medical ganja business that is supposed to make Jamaica rich. RASTA are asking because it was RASTA who made ganja famous, and thereby, Jamaican ganja It was RASTA who suffered death, brutality, social and economic prejudice and hatred, for its love, praise and use of ganja, declaring it RASTA holy Sacrament. The law has been passed, but here are some questions still not answered.

LAND FOR FARMERS       How will the many RASTA farmers, who have been planting ganja on remote Crown lands for which they have no title, apply to the Cannabis Registration Council to be permitted to continue farming on those same lands in a legal way? What negotiations are underway between Government and these farmers to enable them to own or lease these and other lands?. They are, after all, the backbone of the industry, despite having gained their experience during the years when such farming was illegal. Without legal access to land, will these farmers have to be forced to sell their labour (slavery again?) and farming expertise to the owners of large ganja plantations in order to earn a living in the ganja business?

One promise made in the lead-up to the revision of the Dangerous Drugs Act was that traditional small ganja farmers would be given the first opportunity to set up business, before the Big Men would be allowed. In other words, RASTA was promised that the super-rich Jamaicans at the top of the social ladder with access to the lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, professional consultants and political connections to go into large scale production, would have to wait until Ras Natty and his fellow farmers had started earning income from new, registered medical ganja businesses of some kind or other.

BIG BUSINESS        With reports of several urgent applications to set up extensive, expensive ganja businesses from the wealthiest Jamaican families with inheritances from banking, food distribution, tourism and music, how long will they have to wait on RASTA and small farmers to get their businesses operating, so they can begin to spend their money in this new, exciting and prosperous way?

Westmoreland RASTA IyahV, who is reported to have recently signed a 9 year, multi-million-Dollar contract with American multi-million-Dollar HIGHTIMES Magazine to host their Cannabis Cup in Jamaica, raised an ironic laugh when he stated recently: “The Government needs to guarantee that we the people will benefit from the industry because there is the risk of it being taken over by rich people and foreign interests.”

PUBLIC EDUCATION CAMPAIGN       Meantime, who is helping the ganja farmers set up themselves? Which banks are offering loans to farmers, whose only collateral they can offer will be their labour in the business contracts they have signed to grow and/or process ganja? Who is in charge of the business education of these farmers? There is a multi-million Dollar contract for the Ministry of Health to promote the alleged negatives of ganja and we are promised by the Minister who could not warn us for 2 years of the coming Chick-V epidemic, that he will be focusing on teaching students not to use ganja. One would have thought he would use the money to educate the young people to see opportunities in the ganja business, instead of looking for jobs the education system is training them for that don’t exist.

Burke & Sievwright

Says the JLPs Delano Seivwright, co-leader with the PNP’s Paul Burke of the Ganja Legalization movement: “I find it interesting that the biggest chunk of public education coming from the Government is focused on highlighting that ganja is still illegal”

At the same time, there is no project to promote the benefits of the industry or help the farmers know how they can become involved and find funding. The Westmoreland ganja farmers’ organization is seeking crowd-funding of US$1.5 million to set up its organization’s offices and operations, but not to produce a single ganja plant. If each Parish organization is seeking the same amount to develop itself, one has to wonder where money will be found to develop, secure, tend and reap the farms necessary to produce the plants and income needed.

Sister Maxine Stowe

As Sister Maxine Stowe of the RASTAFARI Millenium Council states: “Rastafari Reggae is the global advertiser of Ganja, so how is this advertising messaging going to be controlled from the Jamaica regulatory perspective. It has to be done by the Rastafari Millennium Council that has the rights and intellectual rigor to stand up legally and morally to and for the culture against the commercial interests of Marley Natural and Cannabis Cup deep seated pockets that have been creating massive destabilization in the Rastafari Community!!!”

TAXATION       Government has identified four potential stages to tax the medicinal ganja industry in a bid to benefit from seed to sale, according to a draft document entitled the ‘Regulatory Footprint on Medical Ganja’. Minister of Business, Anthony Hylton explains that Government needs to identify all possible avenues to tax the industry for the benefit of the country and the Minister hints that he is seeking further ways to tax it. There are already howls of protest at this proposal to tax the ganja industry four times.

But after all, the only reason for relaxing the penalties for growing ganja was for the government to make as much money as possible and the only way they can to that is through taxes. Despite the favoured regard (on paper) for the RASTA Nation to grow and use ganja, the Government is not playing Santa Claus in legalizing ways to make money from ganja. People in Government (the same people despite changes of government of the past decades) have finally realized that what RASTA was saying all along about ganja being ‘the healing of the nation’ was a true description of the money it could make to heal all Jamaica’s economic ills. Money, money, money is all everyone is seeing. But no one is saying how the revenues from ganja will be spent. Free medical care for all Jamaicans? Free tertiary education? Or just paying off the 53-year debt burden?

WHAT ABOUT RASTA?         So once again we ask: What about the RASTAs? What’s happening to those people who have been calling for legalization for 80 years of existence? Everyone seems to have a ganja product displaying RASTA colours, icons, names,but so few RASTAs can be seen in close proximity. Members of the vast Marley family use beauty queens wearing Bob Marley T-shirts to advertise products which, like their Marley Coffee, are not made in Jamaica.

In ways like this RASTA culture is being sold globally and the ganja industry provides yet another opportunity for people with money to slap a Red, Gold and Green label on a product and call it ‘authentic Jamaican RASTA’. Who can stop them? The Millenium Council has been trying for 8 years to have RASTA icons, colours and marks of identity declared Intellectual Property Rights of the RASTAFARI Nation, with no success as yet.

RASTA GANJA FESTIVAL                  The RASTA community’s proposal for staging of a national Ganja Festival where Jamaican ganja farmers and producers of medical marjuana products can display the indigenous strains and products of Jamaica to the world, has been overshadowed by the announcement that multi-million-Dollar US magazine HIGH TIMES will hold its first Jamaica Cannabis Cup in Negril in November. Leaders of America’s recreational ganja community and long-standing advocates for legalizing the use of ganja, HIGH TIMES is supported by American and European growers and sellers of marijuana strains, plants, grow equipment, smoking implements, clothing and accessories, who will all be bringing their products to Jamaica if the event is given the go-ahead by the government’s Business, Tourism and Security ministries.

US PROFESSOR LEADS NEGRIL GANJA DEVELOPMENT        The HIGH TIMES event is initiated by well-known American lawyer and University Professor Charles Nesson who has successfully represented HIGH TIMES publishers in US ganja cases. After coming to Jamaic in the 1990s to interface with Jamaican technology development, he has since then involved himself in several social development activities including the introduction of computers in prison reform and the attempted development of a national wrestling programme.

Prof. Nesson & Ras Iyah-V

In recent years he has also involved himself with Maroon communities in Portland and Westmoreland, using his legal knowledge to encourage them to use the terms of the Maroon Treaty to claim rights in Jamaica, including the right to grow ganja on Maroon lands. His personal long-standing use and support of recreational ganja has led him to the Westmoreland ganja farmers, who he has helped form into a powerful Parish organization whose launch meeting was attended by several of the US ganja industry’s leading stars. He has the support of leading Negril personalities including Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Wykeham McNeil (whose sister has a child with Iyah-V) and a leading Negril hotel family. The professor is on record that he intends “…to make Negril the RASTA Capital of Jamaica”.

The Westmoreland Parish organization is led by RASTA farmer Iyah-V, recently appointed as a member of the Cannabis Registration Council. At a recent meeting of the Nyabinghi Council of Elders he was severely sanctioned because of issues still unresolved regarding his introduction of Snoop Dog to the Nyahbinghi House, as well as his stewardship of the finances of the Coral Gardens Survivors funds. Most of all, the Council of Elders expressed extreme disapproval of Iyah-V forming a company with the American professor and announcing plans to claim Sacramental Rights for the HIGH TIMES event their company will be presenting, as the Elders declare that the event does not fit the criteria to qualify as a Rasta Sacramental event.

The Rastafari Millenium Council warns of the introduction of foreign strains and products to Jamaica by HIGH TIMES at a time when the Jamaican ganja industry is not even on its feet. Moreover, the RASTA community fears its morals and principles will be violated by the ‘anything goes’ attitude promoted in HIGH TIMES for and by its recreational users who are expected to flood Negril in the hundreds and thousands for the event.

Will accommodating the American recreational ganja industry and filling Negril hotel rooms be more valuable than preserving the values and attitudes of the culture that has made the world focus on Jamaica, Ganja and RASTA?  Is this all that will remain of RASTA in the new ganja industry – a Bob Marley picture on a beauty queen’s T-shirt?