KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA) is, this afternoon, distancing itself from comments made by CLA director Delano Seiveright, which questioned a recent National Council for Drug Abuse (NCDA) report that was interpreted as saying there is a 50 per cent increase in the number children and adolescents using ganja.

“Despite utterances by ganja lobbyist and Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA) Director Delano Seiveright, the Cannabis Licensing Authority is reinforcing its unequivocal support of the approach taken by the National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA) in executing their mandate to protect Jamaicans against the abuse and misuse of drugs, including ganja,” the Authority said in a statement today.

Chairman of the body Cindy Lightbourne said Seiveright did not speak for the body when he made comments about “matters concerning the work of the Ministry of Health, NCDA and the Chief Medical Officer”.

Seiveright, speaking to OBSERVER ONLINE last weekend, suggested that there was some conflict of interest on the part of Chief Medical Officer Dr Winston De La Haye.

 “Dr De La Haye, who is the backbone of the NCDA for many years, spent all his life belittling ganja law reform and has been keen at promulgating information that many, including well respected members of the medical community, view as highly questionable and out of sync with current realities. How then can Dr De La Haye be expected to reasonably and expertly guide ganja related health policy?”  Seiveright said.

However, Lightbourne said CLA had “neither assessed nor sought to call into question, the findings of the NCDA as it relates to the impacts of the recreational use of cannabis”.

Amid further criticism of the report by deputy chairman of the NCDA and prominent psychiatrist Dr Wendel Abel, the CLA said it has given a commitment to working with the NCDA on its public education activities and continues to include them in its own planned public education initiatives as it is strongly against the use or handling of marijuana by children, teenagers, adolescents and at-risk adults given the “well-known and scientifically established potentially negative effects of the drug”.