While the legality and use of marijuana remains a hotly debated issue in some parts of the Caribbean and elsewhere around the world, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member country Jamaica (as the Stabroek Business has been reporting) continues to parade to the rest of the region both the monetary and medicinal value of the plant commonly known as ‘ganja’.
The latest reports emanating from Kingston regarding the continual conversion of marijuana into a significant economic asset has come in the form of a disclosure that Kaya, the trading name for the first medical marijuana company to open shop in Jamaica two years ago, last week became an exporter of the product after making its first shipment of cannabis oil to the Cayman Islands.
Kaya and Jamaica as a whole are likely to regard the development as yet another breakthrough for a product which has long been linked to drug addiction, even crime in the region and elsewhere in the world, but which Jamaicans have always embraced as an iconic plant which, along with its hallucinogenic properties has now been scientifically proven to have healing properties.