BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Advocate –
The recent report that an Organisation of American States (OAS) study is calling for a serious discussion on legalising marijuana follows a modern trend globally to re-think the “war” against this and other currently controlled substances. The London Guardian of May 13, for instance, reports that the Home Office of Britain is to undertake a study of international drug laws with a visit to Portugal to look at the long-term impact of that jurisdiction’s policy of limited decriminalisation. And, locally, the state is moving ahead with its initiative of a Drug Treatment Court to deal with criminal offenders whose misdeeds are an inevitable consequence of drug dependency. Indeed, one High Court judge is on record as making a public call for the decriminalisation of marijuana specifically in that context.
For now, though, current law in Barbados, based on the strict observance of international treaty obligation, prohibits the possession, supply, importation, and trafficking, inter alia, of all controlled substances including marijuana. And even though we do not possess the wealth of resources comparable to some of the metropolitan states to assist in this fight, various multilateral agreements throughout the years have ensured that we nevertheless pursue the so-called “war on drugs” with as much diligence as is possible in the circumstances.
From time to time, however, there have been sporadic and immediately dismissed calls for the decriminalisation of narcotic drugs. It seems that this reality conjures up, for most Barbadians, the spectre of drug-crazed, wild-eyed “paros” running amok on the nation’s streets and terrorising the daylights out of the right-thinking members of our society. This nightmare scenario ensures that any call for an alternative approach to the present strategy of the war on drugs is doomed to be given short shrift. Yet we might consider, as the OAS has now done, that the drug problem is not only far more complex than might be treated by a single approach of criminalisation, but that it also encompasses an issue of public health; one that is more efficiently handled by therapy than by the blunt force of law.
