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?
Through Red, Gold, Green Spectacles 