COP: Gary Griffith “Ganja still Illegal”

Marijuana is still illegal in Trinidad and Tobago and the police will be enforcing the law. So says COP Gary Griffith who says people should not take the discussions about marijuana decriminalization and Government’s moves in this direction, as permission to break the Law.

The Attorney General laid the Bill in Parliament on Friday. That’s just the first stage which is described as the first read­ing. The bill still has to be debated in both Houses of Parliament, passed, assented to by Her Excellency the President and Proclaimed as Law.

The Dan­ger­ous Drug Amend­ment Bill 2019 pro­pos­es to “es­tab­lish law­ful lim­its for pos­ses­sion and use. Under this proposed amendment, a per­son found in pos­ses­sion of 30 grammes of cannabis or less will no longer be ar­rest­ed for pos­ses­sion. That be­ing said, the Gov­ern­ment al­so pro­pos­es to im­pose an up­per lim­it for law­ful pos­ses­sion of cannabis or cannabis resin prod­ucts. That lim­it will be 60 grammes.

It al­so pro­pos­es that peo­ple with charges be­fore the court for the new up­per lim­it of 60 grammes of cannabis and ten grammes of cannabis resin may ap­ply for those charges to be dis­charged and that the crim­i­nal records of peo­ple with con­vic­tions for the pos­ses­sion of the sub­stance will be ex­punged and they will al­so be able to ap­ply for par­don un­der Sec­tion 87 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

The proposed sister Legislation is the
Trinidad and To­ba­go Cannabis Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty 2019 Bill for the es­tab­lish­ment of a reg­u­la­tive body. The proposal is as follows according to the AG: “We es­tab­lish an au­thor­i­ty, the au­thor­i­ty will re­ceive ap­pli­ca­tions for li­cences, the au­thor­i­ty will con­sid­er those li­cences and grant those li­cences and then the li­cencees who are en­gaged in the po­si­tion would have to meet the stan­dard of the li­cences; prop­er premis­es, con­trol, con­sis­ten­cy is­sues, qual­i­ty is­sues etc”.