Counseling and community service sentences in marijuana bill will achieve nothing
I just could not resist commenting on Dr. Jerry Jailall’s most recent letter to the Editor, wherein was expressed perhaps all the oft-repeated but today discredited myths about marijuana. Not a single point cited a medical position that holds validity today. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but when such opinion (SN, 13 Nov 2022) gratuitously derides an important group of Guyanese citizens - wholly unwarranted at that - and takes a ‘below the belt’ swipe at the current Government in so doing, such opinion must be exposed for the untrammeled bigotry it really represents.
Dr. Jailall’s opinions matter and can be useful sometimes - but certainly not this time, I’m afraid. His country of choice conveniently prohibited marijuana in 1937, but with the precipitating circumstances a non-issue for decades, extensive research conducted and all matters of convenience weighted, the USA has legalized or alternatively decriminalized marijuana in most of its States. Perhaps Dr. Jailall might consider returning to the land of his birth where he can enjoy a country still criminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana.
The Government of Guyana reviewed the research available and analyzed trends worldwide - fully aware why the USA started prohibition in the first place whilst also cognizant of the fact that the USA is today the world’s leading producer of marijuana and it’s value-added products. The Attorney-General weighed up all factors, including the strident reservations of influential citizens who go against the current near consensus internationally, and inserted into the Bill counseling and community service as criminal penalties for possession of small quantities of marijuana.
Counseling for Rastafari is misconceived and just won’t work. It will have no practical impact whatsoever. It won’t act as a deterrent and most will refuse counseling as a matter of principle, accepting the fine in default only by its operation of law but with total disdain otherwise. What could the counseling possibly be about anyway? Advice not to smoke that which research concludes is safe by comparison with tobacco, alcohol and a host of prescription drugs, whilst being a naturally grown herb and not a drug - which can be legally smoked in Canada and many States in the USA? Such advice could only be confusing at its very best.
Guyanese youth would accept counseling as a silly penalty for doing absolutely nothing wrong yet held illegal - a pointless waste of precious time irrespective of whether an individual youth’s time is indeed clearly precious or of no obvious current significance. I agree with Dr. Jailall that counseling is not supposed to be a “punishment”. It would nonetheless be the penalty for breaking the law proscribing the possession of marijuana. A penalty is broadly defined as a consequence or disadvantage attached to an action.
Accordingly a sentence that imposes a penalty such as counseling, which is ordinarily designed to rehabilitate, is a de facto “punishment” where that is how it will be received by those sentenced - not as rehabilitative but punitive in its purpose - a perception that will be underscored by the reality that no relevant message about marijuana can possibly be imparted via counseling in such circumstances.
For the moment, marijuana consumers and the Prison Service will breathe collective sighs of relief. The Bill is but a positive step and not the hoped-for leap in the right direction, as the herb must ultimately be legalized. The counseling aspect of the non-custodial penalty will wither away as naturally as the herb itself is natural. Plans are on the drawing board to grow industrial hemp in Guyana. It won’t do for cool runnings to have one cousin legal and the other illegal when both were banned at the same time back in 1937!