Dear Editor,

The Government has taken commendable steps towards decriminalising ganja. Responses include support for decriminalisation, demands for full legalisation, and insistence that existing criminal sanctions be maintained.

While I have never used marijuana nor do I support it being smoked, I have long contended that its legalisation will be overwhelmingly beneficial for Jamaica.

Opponents of legalisation predict dire medical and behavioural consequences. Careful analysis, however, indicates that the socio-economic costs inflicted on Jamaica by criminalisation of drugs far exceed any potential damage that might arise from legalisation.

Criminalisation of drugs has created vast wealth/power for criminal empires and gangs. It is, therefore, the prime driver of Jamaica’s crime problems, with the attendant murder rate of thousands of Jamaicans annually and an estimated three per cent adverse impact on GDP growth.

It is undoubtedly the major corrupting influence on most sectors/institutions in Jamaica. Combating drugs constitutes a major burden on public expenditure and also a significant cost of doing business, especially for exporters, making Jamaican goods less competitive.

After decades of the “war on drugs” we have not achieved much success or any likelihood of ever doing so.

Legalisation offers several benefits:

* Eliminating the enormous wealth earned by criminal empires/gangs and associated negatives listed above.

* Legalised ganja could be taxed in much the same way as alcohol and cigarettes. Such revenues, along with savings realised, would then be available to mitigate adverse consequences of legalisation.

* Releasing enormous untapped economic potential for cannabis.

Of note, Jamaica cannot unilaterally break its treaty obligations, but nonetheless must be mindful of games being played. The USA always pursues/advances its self-interest based on long-term strategic objectives. In 1970, the rabidly anti-communist President Nixon initiated his “opening to China”, leaving a shocked world, particularly his allies, still pursuing a strategy of isolating China of which policy America was chief architect. America’s long-term strategists had projected that China would emerge as a major world economy and America did not want to be excluded from that market.

It is therefore not improbable that America’s insistence on maintaining current drug policies is to enable it to become the major beneficiary of the new legal marijuana era. Jamaica, along with countries that are major victims of the war on drugs, must aggressively seek to end the current charade now.

Keith Miller

31 Foresythe Drive, Kgn 6

millerkeithl@gmail.com