Guyana not bound to legalise marijuana
Attorney General Basil Williams SC
Attorney General Basil Williams SC

…AG urges magistrate to exercise options

ATTORNEY General, Basil Williams said Guyana at the appropriate time will make its position known on the proposal for the decriminalisation of Marijuana and suggested that this country is not bound to adopt the recommendation by the Caricom Commission.

“When I met with the Rastafari community, they were saying they wanted to be able to walk around with 53 grams, so the society must be able to have a debate on these issues,” said Williams, SC, who noted that though there is a recommendation by the CARICOM Commission, Guyana is not necessarily bound to adopt same.

“I have chaired the Legal Affairs Committee of CARICOM and matters come and different countries take different positions on them. Some issues are there before Caricom for 10 years because other countries do not sign on,” he remarked. The Attorney General reminded that Guyana as a country within the regional bloc is governed by its own rules, while noting that before a position is taken, there must be massive consultations.

“We have our own streams that we have to consult with, people we have to look at first and foremost and the fragility of our system. We have to look at all those considerations,” he stated. The issue of decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana is not novel, he said, and noted that rules over time have been softened.

“We don’t have that issue of agitation about legalizing marijuana. I must say the magistrates are equipped with sentencing policies and procedures to ensure that persons with minimal amounts don’t end up with custodial sentences; they have options and they must exercise those options,” declared the Attorney General.

Alternative sentencing
Over the years, several persons have been placed behind bars for having small amounts of marijuana in their possession– a move which has been frowned upon, given the overcrowding of the country’s prisons. Once found in possession of more than five grams of cannabis, a person can be sentenced to three years in jail.

Williams believes that alternative sentencing should be employed by magistrates, while noting that through his ministry, a US$8M loan has been granted to examine the prison population. He called on magistrates to be cognisant of the state of the prison system and the events of same which led to the death of some 16 inmates in 2016 and the gutting of the Georgetown prison last year.

“So the judiciary must take cognisance of what is happening in the systems,” he said while noting that there are serious criminals and those who have committed petty crimes.
This week, it was announced that a Regional Commission on Marijuana has made recommendations for the decriminalization of marijuana across CARICOM Member States but in controlled and regulated amounts as in the case of alcohol.

The call to decriminalise the use of small amounts of marijuana in the region will be discussed during this week’s 39th Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) being held in Jamaica.

At a press conference on Monday at the Jamaica Pegasus, CARICOM Secretary General–Ambassador Irwin LaRocque–told journalists that the Report of the Marijuana Commission will be presented to the regional leaders by the Chair, Professor Rosemarie Belle-Antoine of the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies.

The Regional Commission on Marijuana was established by the decision of the 25th Inter-Sessional Meeting of CARICOM Heads of Government in March 2014 with a mandate to investigate the use of marijuana.
Ambassador LaRocque said the 10-member commission, which is made up of experts in several fields, has made some far reaching recommendations with regards to the decriminalisation of cannabis.

Those recommendations are also based on extensive consultations in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, the Bahamas, Guyana, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname.

“They are recommending the decriminalisation of marijuana. They are recommending that it be deemed a substance that is controlled and managed as alcohol,” the Secretary-General said while noting, however, that there is some concern about controlling it in terms of youth and adolescent use.

The Alliance for Change (AFC), a major stakeholder in the coalition government, has been calling for the removal of custodial sentences for small amounts of the herb here.

“Custodial sentences serve, in large measure, to criminalise young people, particularly young men who have been caught with small quantities of marijuana – an offence which is a mere error in judgment and not representative of criminal behaviour,” the AFC said. AFC Member of Parliament, Michael Carrington, since 2015, had tabled a bill in the National Assembly for debate but it has since been languishing on the order paper, being deferred time and time again. “The time to act is now.

We must no longer sit idly by and allow our young men and women to be sentenced to several years of jail time alongside hardened criminals, murderers and rapists. “We will not be found complicit in destroying the lives of our young people and wounding our society rather than acting to heal it,” the AFC said.

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