A letter on cannabis that I may or may not send...

Today, I received an update from one of the Change.org petitions that I signed maybe a year or two ago. You can read it and get more details here. But the main point is that there might be a change in laws related to cannabis across most of the Caribbean soon. The creator of the petition asked us to send an email to let our views be known. I don't usually do that but I just started writing and felt like I couldn't stop. I don't even know if I'll send it but this is it:

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Dear Irwin/Mr. LaRocque,

We don’t know each other so I think an introduction is in order. I’m Monique and I’d like to tell you a story about a woman. Let’s call her ‘M’. It probably stands for something like Mildred or Mabel but she’d prefer not to get too specific due to the details of her life this correspondence will include.

M experienced severe menstrual cramps from around the age of 13 onward. Doctors couldn’t help. She tried over the counter painkillers and they would generally work for the first few months before gradually losing efficacy as her body acclimatised to them. Or they never got a chance to work as the nausea sometimes caused her to vomit up to ten times in a single day. She tried hot water bottles, teas, chewing raw ginger... If there was a rumour that something might work, she would try it. Except one thing.

It didn’t get any better as the years went by but she learned to count the hours in her head until the pain ended. She missed school, work, exams, social occasions. It was her life and she accepted that.

One day, ‘that time of the month’ came right around when she had several freelance writing assignments to complete simultaneously. The pain was too intense for her to read her instructions or write and if she spent the day convalescing she’d miss her deadline, endanger her contract and not get paid. So she tried the one thing she’d never tried before. She broke the law and smoked weed.

It didn’t work instantly. It was a very gentle and gradual thing. The muscles which had been clenched painfully began to loosen, the pain dissipated and she felt a general sense of wellbeing. Then she fell asleep for an hour. On waking, she had a full sized meal (which she actually kept down) and with her new energy and lack of pain, she finished her assignments and survived another day.

The next day was a normal day. She didn’t wake up wanting cannabis any more than she would wake up wanting Aleve after taking it. The only difference was this feeling of having been lied to and wronged by the people who kept her from relief when it was so close at hand. Every wasted day spent curled in the fetal position counting down hours of agony grew more painful in hindsight because THERE HAD BEEN A SOLUTION. How dare they tell her she couldn’t have it?

A month passed and she medicated herself with cannabis again and found relief. For a few months this continued with no extra smoking in between. But cannabis is illegal in her country (Trinidad and Tobago) and thus expensive, moderately dangerous to acquire and near impossible to control the quality of (in terms of pesticides, fertilizers etc). So she grudgingly returned to less effective Western medicines.

While there were literally no negative side effects for her and she didn’t find herself craving it for recreational use, she wouldn’t try to imply that it is safe for everyone simply because it is a plant. Hemlock is a plant and so is Poison Ivy. Similarly, some things are safe for about 99% of people but deadly to the other 1%, like peanuts. But M isn’t interested in forcing people to use cannabis, just allowing those who want or NEED to the option to use it and even grow it if they wish. Anything less would be a serious infringement on personal freedoms and a costly one at that.

Here in Trinidad, we pack jail cells with people who grow, sell or use cannabis while murderers, rapists, thieves and child molesters walk free. We find the time to find and jail people for their interactions with a plant that is practically harmless while the people who torment their fellow citizens can go free. M is disinterested in the overlap. She thinks that if the only way you can catch a killer is because he happens to also possess cannabis, you are bad at policing and need to revamp your training. Relying on cannabis as an excuse to round up people and deny them their rights doesn’t help you catch the violent criminals, it just makes it easier to harass people without the resources to legally fight back. Poor people.

Also in Trinidad, our chief export for years has been one of the major contributors to pollution and climate change. But it made lots of money (until recently). A cannabis industry could get the money flowing through our economy again. But our current leader thinks that such issues are just ‘fashionable’. M was most displeased by the shortsightedness and insensitivity of his statements and does not intend to vote for him ever again.

As secretary general of the CARICOM Marijuana Commission, you are in a unique position right now. Your actions could put the Caribbean on track for a much more sustainable future economically and socially. From what I’ve heard, it seems like the commission’s research has already pointed to decriminalization as the only logical step we can take. M shared her story because she wants you to do whatever is in your power to help the region take that step as soon as possible. You see, her medical issue is only a problem one day per month but every day, people across the Caribbean suffer from serious conditions that could be alleviated with cannabis. And every day people are incarcerated in the Caribbean for consuming a plant that they could freely ingest in Canada. Or Portugal. Or Uruguay. Or Peru. Or (for the most part) the Netherlands. Or several of those United States. And every day people suffer from lack of jobs and funded social programmes when Caribbean soil could be supplying the brand new markets for legal cannabis worldwide.

We were lied to. M didn’t go crazy, M didn’t sell all of her possessions to get ‘a fix’, M didn’t engage in risky behaviors while under the influence. She was herself, just not in pain and slightly more mellow/pleasant. So what could possibly be worth the huge costs prohibition has forced us all to pay? Reefer Madness was a propaganda tool with hugely racist undertones and it would be a disgrace to continue to allow our policies to be shaped by the mindset it promotes. Please bear this in mind and help stop the suffering.

Sincerely,

Monique

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Now I'm just looking at what I wrote and wondering if sending it would make a difference at all. The Commission will present its findings and make a suggestion but even if they suggest full legalisation, I think each country's government has the right to say no. I suspect mine will until there's absolutely no other option and the pressure from other countries becomes too much to bear. I would very much like, however, for good sense to prevail ☮️.

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Image sourced from pixabay.com