‘Govt still on the fence’, says AG Williams

Marijuana decriminalisation

By Lakhram Bhagirat

Attorney General Basil Williams said Government is yet to comprehensively address the issue of decriminalising the possession of small quantities of marijuana, noting that if it is agreed to then there may be calls for an increase in quantity. The Attorney General’s comment came following a recommendation in the report of the ‘Commission of Inquiry into the Camp Street Prison Disturbances and Resultant Deaths of March 2016’.
President David Granger commissioned the inquiry to probe into the disturbances and resultant deaths of 18 prisoners at the Camp Street Prison, in Georgetown on the morning of March 3, 2016. The Commission of Inquiry (CoI) was tasked with enquiring into all circumstances surrounding the death of 18 prisoners from the Camp Street Prison to report the findings and conclusions to the Public Security Ministry and to make recommendations on any action that should be taken to avoid a recurrence.
The Commission was headed by retired Justice, and now Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission, James Patterson and was tasked with examining and making findings and recommendations to improve physical infrastructure of the prisons; the existing security arrangements in respect of the custody, management and control of prisoners; outline the appropriate treatment of prisoners in compliance with legal and other requirements and to recommend measures to prevent a recurrence of any such disturbance.
Justice Patterson and the other Commissioners – former Director of Prisons, Dale Erskine and Merle Mendonca – handed over the report to President Granger in June 2016.
The report recommended that Government should decriminalise possession of minimum amounts of marijuana for personal use while establishing and expanding alternatives to incarceration for those charged with low-level drug offences. It is also calling for the distinction between drug trafficking and other types of crime; low-, medium- and high-level drug offences; rank or position of the accused in drug trafficking networks and violent and non-violent offences.
“We also have literature from a UN survey about the outfalls of marijuana use. It paints a dismal picture so there are both sides of the coin and the Rastafari community protested and they are saying that they would be allowed to walk with a minimum of 53 grams of marijuana. Therefore, if we say yes to that then they will want to increase it (the amount). It is not necessarily a fear of mine but as I said, I hadn’t expressed an opinion on that (decriminalisation of small amounts of marijuana),” Williams said.
Additionally, he said that Cabinet is yet to take a stand on the issue and noted that because the CoI recommends the decriminalisation means that it is a “Cabinet recommendation” or that Cabinet is mandated to adopt it. He noted that Cabinet considered all the reports but some aspects are yet to be deliberated on in detail.
Just last week the Regional Commission on Marijuana had a consultation session at the St Stanislaus College to determine the regional approach to marijuana. The Regional Commission on Marijuana was established following a decision taken at the 25th Inter-Sessional Meeting of Caricom Heads of Government in March 2014 in St Vincent and the Grenadines. It is composed of practitioners with expert knowledge in a variety of disciplines including medicine and allied health, health research, law enforcement, ethics, education, anthropology/sociology/culture.