Two weeks ago the government announced that the Cabinet had decided to approve a proposal to remove custodial sentences for persons found with 30 grammes or less of marijuana. The current legislation, as has been generally recognised, is particularly draconian, but the recent proposal would not legalise the drug. Possession, said the Ministry of the Presidency in a statement, would remain an offence; it was simply that those charged would not be sentenced to terms of imprisonment as the law presently requires.
This statement was amplified by Director General Joseph Harmon last Thursday, who told the media that a draft Bill had been included in proposed legislation for tabling at the next sitting of the National Assembly. Cabinet had approved a draft amendment to the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act, he said, that had been presented for its consideration at its meeting in Linden on April 30 this year. The ministers had felt assured that the proposed Bill was in consonance with the report from Caricom’s Regional Commission on Marijuana 2018, in addition to which it did not conflict with the Tobacco Control Act.
The Caricom report to which he referred had been presented to the Heads of Government conference in July last year. It stated, among many other things, that the evidence indicated the existing “legal prohibitionist regime” on cannabis/marijuana was not fit for purpose. It recommended that the narcotic should be declassified as a ‘dangerous drug’ in legislation and reclassified as a “controlled substance,” which was “managed and minimised within a responsibly regulated public health/rights framework and market.”
Despite their views on the inappropriateness of the present legal regime in member states which they felt should be overhauled in the long term, the authors did not believe that a fully liberalised regime was feasible at this point. The government here as well as the opposition, which included a similar provision to the coalition’s recent declaration in its 2015 manifesto, are clearly wedded in theory to an incremental approach. However, whether either of them would be prepared to move beyond this first tentative step if they came into office to reflect the approach recommended in the Caricom report, is not at all certain.
In a clear, although unnamed reference to the Rastafarian community, the Caricom document advocated special provisions being in place to protect religious rights. Certainly the first Ministry of the Presidency statement acknowledges this recommendation, and alludes to the “usages [of marijuana] by our Rastafarian brothers and sisters who require it for use in their worship and sacrament.”
Why this reform of the drugs law was made by the government at this point was not clarified, but the opposition had a cynical view, accusing the coalition of engaging in a “transparent ploy” to mislead Guyanese, and more particularly the Rastafarian community. It pointed out in a release that the government had had more than four years to address the question of removing custodial sentences for possession of small quantities of marijuana, but had failed to do so. When a Bill to this effect was brought to the House in December 2015, the statement said, it had refused to debate it. Without an Act of Parliament, talk about removing custodial sentences for small amounts of marijuana “is nothing more than talk.”
The party’s mention of the 2015 Bill was a reference to the one tabled by the AFC’s Michael Carrington, which the government had consistently deferred without explanation. It was not until two-and-a-half years later when there was a major public outcry about the jailing of farmer and father of three Carl Mangal to three years in prison for possession of 8.4 grammes of cannabis for the purposes of trafficking, that the APNU half of the coalition appeared to pay more attention. As it was, Mr Mangal’s sentence was overturned by the High Court.
Even then, it was not until a few months later in September 2018, that President David Granger announced the government’s intention to amend the current legislation after the Assembly returned from recess in October. “We have taken a decision in principle,” he said, “that custodial sentences for the possession for small amounts of marijuana for personal use would be legally abolished … So it is already a decision which is agreed within the Cabinet, and we have no difficulty in implementing it.” President Granger’s statement of intent at the end of August last year may have been inspired less by the case of Mr Mangal, than by the presentation of the Caricom report the month before. All that can be said is that prior to this he had evinced no particular enthusiasm for reform of the relevant Act.
A certain dilatoriness about the tabling of a draft Bill after Parliament resumed in October, saw the government overtaken by events in the form of a no-confidence vote. Thereafter Parliament should have been dissolved and the Cabinet should not have been meeting. However, the coalition’s recourse to the courts left the country in a kind of limbo, and while the CCJ has already found that the no-confidence vote was valid and the appointment of the Gecom Chair constitutionally flawed, what follows from that will only be learned when the justices of the court hand down their consequential orders today.
Whatever they decide (and that was not known at the time of writing) it is reasonable to suppose that Parliament will be dissolved. Since the Ministry of the Presidency and the Director-General already knew the findings of the CCJ, it seems odd that they should resuscitate the issue at this point, and talk about an amendment Bill being tabled in Parliament. Either they are in a fantasy world, or this is just a ruse for election purposes which belongs more properly in a manifesto.
The Caricom report noted that cannabis has not always been illegal. In Guyana it is more commonly known as ganja, which is its Hindi name, because the British, no less, imported it in the nineteenth century for the Indian indentured labourers.
That President Granger is prepared to take on board at least some of the recommendations of the Caricom report, if only in principle, is not a bad thing in and of itself. It is just that his government procrastinated so long about moving on amendments to the relevant law, that there is no point in announcing any legislative changes now. The coalition is just making empty gestures; and these, as it should know, are meaningless.
