It has been 34 years since Parliament passed the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act of 1988. This severe piece of legislation made possession of marijuana in any amount punishable by three years in prison.
According to Section 4 of the Act, “Any person who has in his possession any narcotic, or any substance represented or held out by him to be a narcotic, shall be liable – on summary conviction, to a fine of not less than thirty thousand dollars, together with imprisonment for not less than three years nor more than five years.”
From then to now through numerous administrations thousands of Guyanese, almost exclusively from the working class, have been arrested and incarcerated alongside hardened criminals, their futures and families destroyed. Whole communities including the Rastafarian community have been stigmatised and shunned based on archaic and misinformed opinions. Meanwhile around the Caribbean and worldwide, the relaxation of repressive laws for marijuana has been on the march as a growing body of evidence indicates that its dangers have been wildly overstated, that it offers health benefits and that policing its use is a waste of resources.
There is no need to enumerate the cases, and of course, this being Guyana, there are very few statistics on the quantum of human suffering this legislation has incurred. But anecdotally in 2018 27-year-old Carl Mangal received three years for being in possession of 8.6 grams. Just to put that in perspective, 8.6 grams weighs less than two sheets of A4 paper.
It is important to see the original legislation in the context of the American-led War on Drugs started by the documented racist President Nixon. This continued seamlessly through the Reagan years and the presidency of Bill Clinton whose 1994 Crime Bill and its “three strikes” rule sent thousands of predominantly African Americans to jail for life. For this his wife was heartily repaid in 2016. The War on Drugs has been and continues to be a complete failure although one might suspect it was simply another way to control Latin American and Caribbean governments during and after the Cold War. Similarly the local legislation also serves as a means of control for the police who continue to apprehend and search anyone, on the premise of suspected marijuana use/ possession ensuring poor Guyanese youths remain cowed. Most significantly it is unevenly applied as better off segments of the population are never arrested even though marijuana is perhaps as widely consumed in the more bourgeois communities.
In December 2015 APNU+AFC backbencher Michael Carrington introduced a bill amending the legislation in part as a reaction to the fatal riot and fire at the Camp St Prison that at the time had 1000 occupants with a capacity for only 600. The Commission of Inquiry later recommended that the judiciary, magistracy and legal sector “decrimi-nalize possession of minimum amounts of mari-juana for personal use”.
At the time then Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo who had previously told Rastafarian leaders that he would never legalise marijuana – “This marijuana business… I think it will outlive my presidency, there will be no change in the law whilst I am here.” – said MPs would be allowed to vote their conscience. But foot dragging by what was said to be senior coalition leadership meant the bill was never debated.
By 2020, the PPP/C manifesto had pledged to “Review the “legalization” on the use of marijuana and on the quantities that attract mandatory minimum jail sentences.”
In January 2021 AG Anil Nandlalll introduced the bill that is now before the house but advocates would be disappointed by the timidity of the amendments: The possession of a quantity of cannabis or any substance held out to be cannabis which does not exceed fifteen grammes would be punishable by mandatory counselling for a period to be determined by the counsellor. Under (2B) the possession of any quantity of cannabis or any substance held out to be cannabis which exceeds fifteen grammes but does not exceed thirty grammes would be punishable by community service.
In the ensuing debate Minister Charles Ramson defending this incremental approach argued that the government cannot conduct experiments with people’s lives, “especially young people.” But has not 34 years of mass and futile incarcerations been one big failed experiment in drug eradication? And is it not the case that people are smoking anyway? Deputy Speaker Lenox Shuman was similarly hyperbolic: “We cannot sit there and permit all of our society, all of our young people to be walking around with one kilogramme of marijuana every single day. When we get to that point then all of our society descends into chaos…our structures start to deteriorate, our families start to fail and the entire Guyanese society suffers from a systemic break-down,” Does Mr Shuman not realise that all of the above have been going on for decades in this country? Is he also aware that his own Amerindian “constituents” in the Rupununi are regularly targeted by CANU as part of a campaign against what it calls “micro trafficking”? His declaration that “everyone” will be walking around with a kilo of marijuana is both condescending and based on zero evidence. It is the same old fear mongering stretching back to the 1930s and the film “Reefer Madness”.
The fact is that this bill hardly rectifies the most troubling aspect of the current laws – the criminalisation for possession. Those caught will still have to be processed before going into counselling for which there seems to be little concept or capacity. As for community service it is not much less stigmatising and disruptive as a jail sentence.
That is because the real objective of the bill is to relieve the burden on police, the judiciary and the prison service. However the government just can’t resist the impulse to continue punishing offenders. This reflects a persistent state culture of always wanting to punish our citizens. We see this in the recent calls for harsher sentences for drunk driving and domestic abuse. But some of the most extreme and utterly disproportionate sentences are already handed out for rape and murder in this country but they have failed to serve as a deterrent. 95 indivi-duals await trial in the High Court for murder/ manslaughter; 170 for various sexual offences.
The deviancy that seems all pervasive is woven from the same cloth and it is only through generating awareness and education while creating a more humane society that it will fade away.
The Bill is now before the Special Select Commit-tee and up to the end of March it was inviting public submissions on the proposed legislation but again with the narrow focus being “the quantum of marijuana that would have a non-custodial sentence…”.
Sadly these baby steps have a long way to go to match the more expansive and enlightened approach taken by fellow Caribbean nations.