Towards social justice and economic empowerment? Exploring Jamaica’s progress with implementing cannabis law reform

Authors: Axel Kleina , Global Drug Policy Observatory, University of Swansea, Swansea, UK; bShore & Whāriki Research Centre,
Marta Rychertb, College of Health, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand;                    Machel A. Emanuelc Department of Life Sciences, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica

ABSTRACT

The Dangerous Drugs Amendment Act (DDAA) 2015 positioned Jamaica at the forefront of international cannabis law reforms in the developing world. The DDAA legalised and regulated commercial cultivation and sale of cannabis for medicinal and therapeutic use, legalised home cultivation and decriminalised personal possession of cannabis. This dramatic policy change came after years of discriminatory
drug law enforcement and multiple attempts at cannabis law reform motivated by social justice and cannabis activism. Drawing on ethnographic observations of the implementation of the DDAA and
interviews with key cannabis policy stakeholders in Jamaica, we discuss the extent to which the social justice ideals behind the law have translated into practice on the ground. Our analysis focuses on two dimensions of social justice relevant in drug law reform: (1) penalisation and criminal record expungement policies, and (2) economic empowerment and the distribution of wealth (ie the diversity within the new  cannabis industry and the transition of traditional illegal ganja farmers
to the new legal cannabis economy). Reflecting on the first five years of implementing the DDAA in Jamaica, we explore social justice achievements under the DDAA and discuss persisting structural barriers to economic justice and how they could be addressed.

Introduction

In April 2015, the Jamaican government passed the Dangerous Drugs Amendment Act
(DDAA 2015), making the English-speaking island the first country in the Caribbean region
to legalise medicinal cannabis production and sale, decriminalise personal possession and
permit home cultivation of cannabis for personal use. The DDAA marked a significant change
in the country’s prohibitive cannabis policy and history of discriminatory cannabis law
enforcement that affected the working-class, poor and minority communities. Domestically,
the reform under the DDAA has been promoted as a significant economic opportunity for
Jamaica (via promotion of ‘cannabis tourism’ and establishment of a new medicinal cannabis
products export industry). The political sponsor of the DDAA, the then Minister of Justice
Mark Golding, also spoke publicly about his objective of advancing human rights and social
justice via the drug reform.

Despite the significance of the DDAA reforms, only a handful of evaluations of the act’s
implementation have been completed. The main focus of these has been on regulatory and
policy challenges in transitioning from an illegal to legal cannabis market economy in the
context of a small island developing country (Davenport and Pardo 2016; Rychert, Emanuel,
and Wilkins 2020, 2021), including the financial barriers to entering the new legal cannabis
industry faced by local ganja farmers in Jamaica (Emanuel, Haughton, and K’nife 2018; Jones,
Porter, and Bishop 2017; Klein and Hanson 2020). Surprisingly, wider social justice aspects
of this reform remain underexplored in the literature on Jamaican drug policy, even though
these were the driving motivation behind the policy change initiated by the Minister of
Justice.

Drawing on ethnographic observations during the implementation of the DDAA and
interviews with key cannabis policy stakeholders in Jamaica, we discuss the extent to which
the social justice ideals behind the law have been translated into practice on the ground.
Our analysis focuses on two dimensions of social justice: (1) political justice (ie addressing
state violence directed against cannabis growers and consumers as reflected in the penalties
imposed) and (2) economic justice (ie economic empowerment of traditional ‘small-scale’
ganja growers and equitable distribution of wealth through state action). Reflecting on the
first five years of the act’s implementation in Jamaica, the paper explores social justice
achievements under the DDAA as well as persisting structural barriers to economic justice
and how they could be addressed.

Normalising cultural practice

Jamaica has a cultural reputation for cannabis use and cultivation, including as part of
Rastafari faith and in traditional folk medicine (Chevannes 2004). In their groundbreaking
study, the authors of ‘Ganja in Jamaica’ (Rubin and Comitas 1975) showed how cannabis, or
ganja as it is known in Jamaica, was integrated into everyday life and used their study to
dismiss the so-called amotivational syndrome that had been attributed to habitual cannabis
consumers. The study showed how the performance of farmers consuming ganja throughout
the agricultural work cycle did not differ from that of the non-consuming control group. Far
from debilitating working practice, ganja was in fact considered a facilitator (Rubin and
Comitas 1975).

Until the recent cannabis law reform, the drug laws inherited by the independent Jamaican
state from the preceding colonial administration were out of sync with this cultural reality.
Criminalising an aspect of everyday normality drove a deep wedge between the state and
the people, undermined governmental legitimacy and provided the state authorities with
a powerful tool that could be used to uphold and intensify social and economic inequalities.

Much of this is now remedied, as the provisions of the DDAA have gone a long way
towards normalising the status of cannabis in Jamaica. Under the 2015 amendment to the
Dangerous Drugs Act, personal possession of up to two ounces and smoking of cannabis in
a public place have been downgraded to an administrative offence, and home cultivation
of up to five plants is permitted. Members of the Rastafari movement have been permitted
to use and cultivate cannabis for sacramental purposes in locations registered as places for
Rastafari worship. Permission can also be granted to use and publicly display cannabis and
its derivatives at events organised for the ‘primary purpose of celebrating the Rastafari culture’.

Since the introduction of this law, permissions have been granted for a number of
festivals including Rastafari Rootzfest, Scarce Feast, Rebel Salute and Stepping High Music
Festival. As part of the reform package, an amendment to the Criminal Record Act introduced
a simple administrative mechanism for expunging criminal records for minor cannabis
offences (Golding 2016). The political sponsor of the DDAA, then Minister of Justice Mark
Golding, spoke publicly about his objective of advancing human rights and promoted the
DDAA as an opportunity to make ‘Jamaica’s law more consistent with the cultural, social and
economic circumstances of [Jamaican] society’ (Golding 2016).

Additionally, the DDAA regulated the production and sale of cannabis preparations for
medicinal use. Consequently, a number of legal cannabis dispensaries have opened in
Kingston, Montego Bay and Negril (ie the capital of Jamaica and its major tourist centres)
where, with a doctor’s recommendation, cannabis flower, concentrates and medical formulations
can be purchased legally by adults (ie customers at least 18 years old). At the time of
writing (May 2021), 29 retail licences to sell cannabis have been granted (Cannabis Licensing
Authority, personal communication).

In the US, drug policy has long been critiqued for being an instrument for policy agendas
that have nothing to do with the promotion of public health which is ostensibly the raison
d’etre for drug control. Michelle Alexander (civil rights advocate and author) pointedly calls
the war on drugs ‘the new Jim Crow’, depicting the disproportionate arrest and incarceration
rates for Afro Americans, and the debilitating consequences that follow from convictions,
such as the loss of entitlements to social services and removal of voting rights in a process
described as civil death (Alexander 2010). The more recent recreational cannabis legalisation
reforms in a number of US states have increasingly considered ways to address those equity
issues (Adinoff and Reiman 2019; Kilmer and Neel 2020), yet uncertainties remain concerning
how and to what extent legalisation will be able to address social inequities in America (Hall
and Carter 2021; Kilmer and Neel 2020).

Into the field

The data for this article come from face-to-face interviews with local stakeholders in Jamaica,
ethnographic observations and site visits, and published literature. We conducted face-to-face
interviews with 56 stakeholders involved in and/or affected by the implementation of
the DDAA. Informants come from public, private and civil society sectors and include illegal
cannabis farmers. We interviewed 14 licensed commercial cannabis industry players (licensed
cultivators, processors and retailers), four illegal growers transitioning to the licensed commercial
cultivation sector as part of the Alternative Development Programme, 14 illegal
cannabis growers, seven civil servants from health, business and enforcement agencies
involved in the development and/or implementation of the DDAA, 10 academic researchers
and cannabis policy analysts, four cannabis and social justice activists and three politicians.
Some interviewed stakeholders held multiple roles in the reform process (eg politicians and
academics moved between their government and academic appointments and industry
roles). Therefore, the stakeholder classification above is based on participants’ primary role
as identified during the interview and the context in which the interview occurred (eg in a
government agency office, in a cannabis retail store, etc). Ethnographic observations
included visits to illegal cultivation farm sites and licensed dispensaries and processing
facilities. Interviews and field observations were conducted during three data collection
periods between June 2019 and February 2020, ie four to five years after the DDAA 2015
was passed (ie June 2019, November 2019 and February 2020). Three key informants were
interviewed on two occasions, and three retailers were visited on multiple occasions.

As part of formative research, and to inform our understanding of the law and its implementation,
we also reviewed the DDAA legislation and accompanying Interim Regulations
for the cannabis regime. In addition, the academic literature, grey literature and media
reports on cannabis reform in Jamaica were consulted. We accessed and requested additional
official statistical information from government sources to complement the data from the
interviews, field observations, and academic and media review.

Our use of field research methods to study the policy and legal frameworks for cannabis
in Jamaica provides a critical tool of analysis and viewpoint that is entirely absent from the
official reports released by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) following their
mission to Jamaica in 2018. This approach helps understand impacts and consequences
from a bottom-up perspective. In our interviews we came across the term ‘grassroots people’
in reference to a broad group of rural and urban poor who clearly are not part of the elite.
It is their habitual consumption of cannabis, be this in the teas that are a common remedy
in rural Jamaica, or rolled into spliffs and smoked for spiritual enlightenment, stress relief or
entertainment, which delineates the everyday of a cultural norm. The purpose of this article
is to describe the impact of the policy change in terms of aligning the new legal status of
cannabis with everyday life, including the social lives and economic fortunes of ‘grassroots
people’. We do this by tying our findings to the history of cannabis in Jamaica, creole culture,
and the deliberate adoption of cannabis by the Rastafari movement.

Cannabis creole – the transplantation of cannabis to Jamaica

In few countries is cannabis so tightly woven into the national fabric as in Jamaica. As locus
classicus of the ganja complex, Jamaica produced the first documented field studies demonstrating
how habitual cannabis consumption was functionally integrated into the agricultural
working cycle in traditional rural communities (Rubin and Comitas 1975). The advocacy of
cannabis-generated pleasures by Jamaica’s musical ambassadors provides an exuberant
critique and challenge to the international prohibition regime. And among cannabis aficionados,
the cultivars of cannabis historically grown in Jamaica’s equatorial climate are
renowned for producing some of the finest euphoric experiences.

Although not endemic to the island, cannabis is also emblematic for the cultural assemblage
that has come to characterise the Caribbean region. While cannabis was first introduced
by the Spanish colonisers in an unsuccessful attempt to stimulate hemp production,
the introduction of psychoactive strains is often traced back to the arrival of migrants from
the Indian subcontinent. To fill the labour shortage in the West Indian plantation sector
following the abolition of slavery, the imperial authorities recruited workers in Europe, and
particularly in India. Between 1834 and 1920 an estimated 464,000 people came to the
tropical Americas as ‘indentured labourers’, with an estimated 36,000 landing in Jamaica. Far
larger groups settled in Guyana and Trinidad, where there were also records of cannabis
consumption, but it is in Jamaica where the co-mingling of African and indentured labourers
and the daily ritual of consuming cannabis after a day’s work on the plantation led to the
word ganja being adopted and popularised by the host population (Chevannes 2004). It
should be noted that the term ganja is also found in official correspondence from the
mid-nineteenth century, suggesting the administrative machinery of the British empire may
have had its own circuits of experience and knowledge transfer that contributed significantly
to the adoption of the term.

Significant though Indian cultural heritage and migration have been, they may not have
constituted the sole vector for dissemination of cannabis across Jamaica, and across the
Western hemisphere in general. Coinciding with the recruitment of labour in the Indian
subcontinent was the resettlement of so-called ‘recaptives’, who originated from Central
Africa and were known at the time as Congoes. These were people liberated by Royal Navy
vessels from slaving ships bound mainly for Cuba and Brazil. An estimated 11,000 are estimated
to have been shipped to Jamaica.

As Duvall has recently established, cannabis consumption had by that time become
deeply entrenched in Central Africa and was part of the cultural memory that travelled to
the Americas. In Jamaica this is reflected in terms like diamba, makoni and kaya, which can
be traced back to Central Africa. But the most significant clue is the use of the calabash water
pipe, a delivery mechanism of which there is no trace in either India or the Americas.
According to Duvall, a century-old African cannabis culture has largely been written out of
the historical record by successive colonialist historiographies, yet has shaped the emerging
cannabis cultures in the Americas (Duvall 2019a, 2019b).

The ‘African roots of marijuana’ (Duvall 2019a) lend poignancy to the adoption of cannabis
as a sacrament and rallying point for Rastafari, as a counterpoint to Babylon and radical
alternative to its psychoactive substances of choice. Instead of the intense exploitation of
man and plant (sugarcane) that is the hallmark of the plantation complex, the village autarky
of the Rastafarian community created equitable human relations with deep respect for cannabis
as ‘plant teacher’ (Waldstein 2020). Equally significant is the vicious negation of the
African heritage of the main population through the punitive approach adopted by the
Legislative Council in 1913, and subsequent colonial administrations. Symbolically repudiated
as a ‘dangerous drug’ with the 1924 Dangerous Drugs Act, the prohibited status of
cannabis was then instrumentalised by the colonial regime who found that ‘ganja offered a
good pretext for imprisoning Rastafari’ (Chevannes 1994).

The newly independent Jamaican state of 1962 retained cannabis prohibition along with
most colonial legislation. In part this reflected the strict limitations imposed on nominal
sovereignty by the overpowering presence of US hegemony in the Caribbean sea. But it
also signalled the shifting concerns of an emerging national elite faced with the rising
demands of the rural poor and an increasingly volatile urban population. In the 1970s, the
rapid increase in oil prices and the simultaneous economic slowdown in major export markets
led to a serious deterioration in Jamaica’s balance of payments, triggering double-digit
inflation, high levels of unemployment and migration. With the spending capacity of the
state severely constrained, an alliance was forged between parliamentarians and local neighbourhood
gangs, who ‘defended’ constituencies in lieu of protection. The Jamaican ban on
ganja then created an absurd situation where the cannabis market had been captured by
organised criminal groups, while at the same time law enforcement were arbitrarily enforcing
the uncompromising law even in the face of massive cannabis use. Penalties could be draconian
(with a mandatory prison sentence of a minimum 18 months for ganja possession
between 1964 and 1972; Chevannes 2004), fuelling over-crowding of prisons and court
congestion, and entrenching corruption. In some ways this perpetuated the colonial situation
of effectively delegitimising Jamaican women and men by criminalising an important aspect
of everyday life.

Repeated calls to rectify this situation and align the law with cultural practice led to the
Ganja Commission, a group of independent experts who ran a long-standing consultation
before submitting a number of suggestions to the Jamaican government at the end of 2000
(Chevannes et al. 2001). After the US ambassador warned of dire consequences were Jamaica
to adopt the recommended decriminalisation of cannabis possession, the reforms were
shelved (Klein 2016). A decade on, the situation had changed significantly, with growing
normalisation of cannabis in many US states, a new discussion on drug policy reform in the
context of the Organization of American States, and the legalisation of cannabis by Uruguay
in 2014. Jamaica’s Peoples National Party administration, led by Portia Simpson-Miller, tabled
the DDAA after public outcry following the death of a labourer Mario Dean who was arrested
for possession of a spliff (marijuana cigarette) and subsequently killed in custody of the state.
In 2016, a new government was elected (the Jamaica Labour Party, led by Andrew Holness)
who published and gazetted the regulations for the reform, including the establishment of
a medical cannabis industry in Jamaica.

The long road to bringing the law into line with cultural practice

The implementation of the DDAA is the result of long-standing efforts by activists and reformers
such as Barry Chevannes, who headed the Jamaican Ganja Commission in 1999, to bring
the law in line with cultural practice (eg Chevannes 2004). The Ganja Commission was the
most systematic attempt to find a consensual alternative to the punitive approach being
strongly advocated by the US government and international organisations (Klein 2001;
Platzer and Mirella 2001). With the door to decriminalisation slammed shut when the Ganja
Commission’s recommendations were shelved, reform-minded policymakers in Jamaica
began working with their counterparts in other regional governments to reframe drug control,
which had hitherto been treated solely as a security issue. The regional organisation
Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) provided a platform where the
small island states of the Commonwealth Caribbean, often with financial support from the
UK or EU, could break out of their isolation to explore policy alternatives.

Following a series of meetings over the course of the year, the Heads of CARICOM governments
issued a joint declaration in 2002 that drugs, hitherto treated solely as a security
issue, were primarily a public health issue, thereby paving the way for alternative approaches
and treatment of drug offenders. In Jamaica this included the formation of a drug court, a
model that continues to be promoted assiduously by US agencies, as well as the expanded
use of community service orders, all supervised by the probation service (Harriott and Jones
2004; Singh 2004).

Limited though these measure were in effecting a trend reversal (Haisley 2013), they
signalled an important reset in how drugs were considered, which, with a considerable lag,
fed through into the prison sector. After 2009, the prison population, driven to a large extent
by the criminalisation of drugs, decreased at a substantial rate in both absolute numbers
and the population rate, before tapering off (Table 1).

A significant decline in the number of cannabis-related street-level interventions was
observed even prior to the 2015 amendment. Between 2014 and 2015 the total cannabis-related
arrests dropped by 77%, from 10,223 to 2389 (Davenport and Pardo 2016). Criminal
charges for personal possession of cannabis started decreasing markedly from mid-2014,
following a couple of high-profile cases of abuse publicised in the media, and pressure to
ease enforcement towards users (Davenport and Pardo 2016).

Reflective perhaps of a general change in societal attitude, in practice these downward
trends were always subject to the discretion of law enforcement officers at the time. In
Jamaica, law enforcement is experienced by the urban poor more as an occupational hazard
than as policing by consent (Harriott 2000). Furthermore, the Jamaican Constabulary continues
to be tainted by corruption, which is possibly endemic and subject to continuous
efforts by anti-corruption initiatives and agencies (Transparency International 2021).

Five years on, what does DDAA mean for the grass roots?

The changes introduced with the DDAA implemented in 2016 then followed an established
trajectory where street-level policing lags behind shifts at the policy level and
increasingly permissive societal attitudes. A structural change was therefore needed that
would impose change from above. The challenge lay in reconciling liberal reforms with
the repressive measures required by Jamaica’s international partners. As a small, developing
island state, Jamaica did not have the heft to steer a sovereign course like the
Netherlands, Canada or even Uruguay, but – in the words of Minister of Justice Mark
Golding – had to ‘dance between the raindrops of the [United Nations] treaty system’
(Golding Field Interview, 2020).

The provisions of the DDAA could not therefore move towards full-blown legalisation for
anything but medical cannabis use, which would per force exclude the large majority of
what some informants called ‘grassroots people’. Accordingly, the possession of less than
two ounces of cannabis continues to be a ticketable offence, but with a twist. As the former
Minister of Justice explained in an interview with the research team, ‘We took [the] decision
not to print tickets because we did not want the police to go around ticketing people’
(Golding Field Interview, 2020).

Sanctions on smoking of cannabis in a public place have been reduced to a modest fine
of 500 JMD (approximately 4 USD). Moreover, the DDAA was accompanied by the Criminal
Records (Rehabilitation of Offenders) (Amendment) Act, which introduced a simple administrative
mechanism for expungement of criminal records for minor cannabis offences (ie
personal possession but not cultivation), with approximately 4000 expungements recorded
between late 2014 and 2016 (Golding 2016). This has removed a significant practical burden,
as well as the stigma of a criminal record.

While difficult to quantify, the DDAA, at least according to some of the informants we
interviewed, has lifted an enormous weight off the shoulders of cannabis consumers. One
informant, who although he did not identify as Rastafarian was recognisable as a possible
cannabis consumer from his dread locks and apparel, said ‘It is simply not comparable to
before’ (Field Interview). He was now able to go out without fear of arrest, and could travel
outside his neighbourhood without being stopped and searched.

Multiple informants testified to the transformative effect the legal normalisation of a
widespread cultural practice was having on hitherto stigmatised and persecuted communities.
Again, the accompanying mental health benefits will not be easy to document, as the
populations most affected are not in close touch with mental health services. It is safe to
say, however, that in political terms the DDAA has made a contribution to advancing social
justice.

Economic development and the empowerment of traditional farmers – still waiting

The establishment of the new therapeutic cannabis sector under the DDAA has also provided
a unique opportunity to address historical injustices by creating new legal employment
options for disadvantaged communities and pathways for transitioning from illegal ganja
farming to the new licensed therapeutic cannabis space. Indeed, the ‘social transformation,
greater social equity and wealth creation for many of [Jamaica’s] citizens’ envisioned via the
cannabis reform was an important part of the political vision for the new cannabis regime
in Jamaica and at the centre of public communication around the DDAA at the time the
reform was passed (Gordon 2016).

Five years after the passage of the DDAA, however, many local stakeholders expressed
concerns over the lack of progress in the economic empowerment of local stakeholders,
citing structural and financial barriers faced by illegal ganja cultivators seeking to enter the
licensed scheme (Hanson 2020; Klein and Hanson 2020; Rychert, Emanuel, and Wilkins 2020;
The Gleaner 2020). The Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA), the public agency responsible
for regulating the new medicinal cannabis sector in Jamaica, does not publish detailed data
on the socio-demographic characteristics of licensed cannabis operators. However, information
gathered during our research suggests licensees come overwhelmingly from the
Jamaican business class rather than a small-scale, subsistence farming background and
‘grassroots people’. A number of stakeholders interviewed during this research (as of 2019/
early 2020) estimated that only ‘one or two’, ‘maybe three’ licensees came from a grassroots
cannabis farming background (approximately 45 licences were issued at the time of interviewing.
By May 2021, 78 licences had been granted; Jamaica Information Service 2021).

Although the ‘tiered’ licensing scheme was designed to accommodate the entrance of
small farmers into the new legal market, with reduced security infrastructure requirements
and lower licensing fees for cultivators operating on a small scale, the cost of regulatory
compliance and licensing fees remain prohibitive in the eyes of ganja growers. In addition
to the financial expenses, there are also challenges with adjusting ganja cultivation practices
to fulfil the requirements of licensed legal production (eg regarding indiscriminate use of
animal manure or chemical fertilisers), adopting the seed-to-sale record keeping, inventory
control, security infrastructure (biometric locks, cameras, fencing, etc) and postharvest infrastructure
required. Ultimately, the transition from illegal cultivation to legal therapeutic
cannabis enterprise appears to be too onerous for many farmers, who may also see little
incentive in transitioning to the legal space (see also Jones, Porter, and Bishop 2017). Some
illegal ganja farmers expressed the sentiment of a wide disconnect between the government-
regulated scheme – which is designed to ‘control, regulate and enforce’ access to ‘medical
cannabis’ – and their own everyday practice of cultivating ganja as a subsistence crop
that supports the community, and which is seen primarily as an agricultural and cultural
practice embedded in the community. For example, one farmer said: ‘They’re doing medical
marijuana, we want to do recreational. They’re putting in measures to slow us down. But for
me – we’re coming from scratch. We just want to be ourselves’.

In June 2020, the CLA announced the development of a new (Transitional) Special Permit
licensing scheme, which aims to address some of the above concerns (CLA 2020b). The
scheme would allow farmers to operate for 24 months without the need to comply with all
infrastructural and security requirements (with alternative measures allowed to ensure traceability
and security of cannabis production) prior to transitioning to the full licence. The
permit will be means-tested and the proposed licence fee is set at a reduced rate of 1000
USD (CLA 2020b) – half of the current lowest rate for small-scale growers cultivating an area
of less than one acre. The scheme will provide an opportunity to address the systemic issues
highlighted above, but the extent of farmer engagement and the impact on their transition
remains to be seen.

The regulatory framework for the licensed medicinal cannabis regime does not explicitly
address the issue of Rastafarians’ involvement in the commercial cultivation of ganja. Under
the DDAA, growing cannabis for sacramental use is legal, and a new process for approving
‘events organised for the primary purpose of observing Rastafarian faith’ has also been established
in order to allow Rastafarians to promote their cultural practice. However, these provisions
are limited to non-commercial, faith-based activities, and the lack of attention to
Rastafarians’ role in the wider commercial aspects of the regime remains contentious (Rychert,
Emanuel, and Wilkins 2020). Some high-profile Rastafarian leaders have called for more
government support for the Rastafarian community entering the commercial cannabis space,
and referred to Rastafarians’ ‘economic rights’ to benefit from the reforms. The Rastafari
Millennium Council (RMC), a faction of the Rastafarian community, has also called for greater
transparency regarding the financing of events ‘organised for the primary purpose of observing
Rastafarian faith’, illustrating this group’s counter-position to the capitalist ideals behind
the law and its implementation (RMC 2016).

The exemption for growing and using ganja in places of Rastafari worship has offered
some legal protections. The Rastafari establishment (churches) are issuing sacramental signs,
but some of the ganja grown at these sites is reportedly filtered into the black market. There
are no additional infrastructural requirements under the sacramental permits, and this
less-burdensome cultivation option may prevent some farmers from transitioning to the
licensed space under the new legal medicinal cannabis regime. Meanwhile, media have
featured reports about police destroying plantations of ganja grown for religious purposes
(The Gleaner 2021) and farmers interviewed in the Negril parish complained about extortion
by rogue police officers.

Insights from the interviews and ethnographic observations indicate that the new industry
consists mostly of members of the Jamaican elite and business class, who often partner
with foreign investors to bring in financial capital and knowledge of Western cannabis production
processes regulated under ‘medical’ schemes elsewhere. Indeed, there has been
extensive media coverage of foreign businesses in the Jamaican cannabis sector (Marijuana
Business Daily 2019; Pate 2020; Subramaniam 2019). Foreign investment has benefitted the
development of the new local medical cannabis sector in Jamaica by providing an essential
source of start-up capital for legal cannabis businesses, as well as knowledge and human
resources. However, reflecting on the five years of implementing the legal scheme, some
informants expressed concern over the inherent imbalance of power between foreign investors
and local actors, particularly small-scale ganja farmers who lack the legal, financial and
knowledge capital to enter into appropriate and fair agreements with investors (Rychert,
Emanuel, and Wilkins 2021). One informant farmer we interviewed who has followed the
process in Jamaica and other Caribbean countries warned that ‘in Jamaica, Antigua, St. Lucia,
local people will be used just for their labour’.

The specifications and exclusions appear to have stacked the deck against the small
farmers. As another interviewed farmer asked:

why is the requirement so stringent for the poor man now? … no criminal record, or an
expunged criminal record and even then it is a bit shady. Then land possession, cameras, transportation
of goods with escort … they specify the amount of cameras in the storage areas, the
drying area and in the field. They specify how high the fences are supposed to be. It is an estimated
J6 million dollars for an acre, it is not for a small farmer, the whole system is set up as a
deterrent.

Recognition of the vulnerability of local ganja farmers is critical to designing tailored
government support for the local cannabis farmers and Rastafari community. For example,
some civil society stakeholders interviewed in our research argued that it is the role of the
government and regulators to enable domestic agricultural funding of the local cannabis
sector (rather than the sector searching for support from overseas and relying on financing
via foreign investment), and stressed the need to include legislative protections for domestic
farmers (eg set the minimum proportion of cannabis output that has to come from smallscale
domestic farmers, as regulated in another Caribbean island, St Vincent, and establish
a minimum purchase price paid by large-scale processors). Despite the intention of regulators
and government to transition illegal ganja farmers to the legal scheme, the current legislative
framework has not fully embraced these actors, and has failed to establish a comprehensive
legal structure for their inclusion. As one civil servant said:

I believe that the deliberate and specific laws are required for certainty and predictability to
protect these small traditional farmers. If you look at how the world is going … there is a movement
to ensure that they benefit from this industry. […] I believe that a system can be built
around them, where they can be trained and there is adequate capacity to build in so they can
produce at the level that is expected. It is not impossible, all it requires is consultation and
specific law to support it.

Given the scarcity of specific legal provisions tailored towards traditional ganja farmers,
government agencies have relied on ad hoc programmes to facilitate the inclusion of farmers
into the scheme. In mid-2017, the Jamaican Cabinet announced the roll-out of the so-called
Alternative Development Programme (ADP), a special pilot regime that aims to facilitate
collective farming and connect growers’ collectives with licensed commercial buyers (ie
processors and retailers) (CLA 2018). However, early implementation of the pilot ADP proved
to be slow. Problems have included the lack of formal ownership of land by the communities
chosen to participate in the programme and issues with road access to land (as required
under the regime rules). As of early 2020, only one community has been able to set up the
required infrastructure and sell cannabis cultivated under the ADP programme to a
licensed buyer.

The structural barriers, financial costs and regulatory hurdles perceived by farmers in
transitioning from illegal to legal enterprise may undermine their interest in the legal scheme
in the long run. Hence, the question for the future implementation of DDAA remains how
to make the legal scheme an attractive alternative to the business-as-usual practice of farming
ganja for the illegal recreational market. It appears the benefits need to go beyond only
removing the threat of criminal sanctions.

Legalising cannabis as a form of cultural emancipation

The much-feted alignment between legal provisions and cultural norms that has been
achieved by the DDAA has removed the anomalous status of cannabis, which was widely
used and culturally integrated in Jamaica, yet prohibited. It is useful to recall that according
to the 2016 drug use prevalence survey conducted by National Council on Drug Abuse with
support from Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), 18% of respondents
reported annual and 15.8% current (ie past month) cannabis use (NCDA 2016).

To recapture the situation before the DDAA, the term quasi-legal, as used in African case
studies, is useful for describing the tension between the criminal justice system and social
practice, and in particular the ‘much leeway in the interpretation and application of legal
statutes’ (Carrier and Klantschnig 2018, 338). At first glance there are ample parallels between
Jamaica and the countries of the African khat belt – they were both under British administration
and upon independence inherited an identical legal framework from their colonisers.
Secondly, as developing countries, they have been subject to immense pressure to adopt
international drug policy conventions and, arguably, have highly restricted sovereignty.

Yet there are also contrasts insofar as khat, the psychoactive plant substance popular in
British Somaliland, Kenya and Uganda, has never been subject to either international scheduling
or national controls. Secondly, the colonial experience of African colonies was a transformational
‘episode in African History’ (Ajayi and Falola 2000, 125). Jamaica, on the other
hand, became a British colony in 1670 and was created through the colonial experience. In
contrast, British Somaliland became a British protectorate in 1886, Kenya in 1888, and
Uganda in 1894. The utter destruction of the indigenous Amer-Indian people in Jamaica,
followed by transplantation of the ancestors of its current population from other continents,
created a creole culture without pre-colonial traditions to refer to and claim legitimacy from.
Hence, ganja in Jamaica was always open to challenge by the authorities as an imported
vice in the way that Kenyan or Somali khat chewing was not. Thirdly, the state in Jamaica is
visible and well defined. In Somaliland the state has collapsed, and in the rural areas of Kenya
and Uganda the state presence is weak, creating opportunity but also a need for alternative
forms of governance that by necessity need to interpret legal frameworks pragmatically.

To cite this article: Axel Klein, Marta Rychert & Machel A. Emanuel (2022): Towards social justice
and economic empowerment? Exploring Jamaica’s progress with implementing cannabis law
reform, Third World Quarterly, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2021.1989300

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1989300

Published online: 24 Jan 2022.

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