‘Stop stigma against marijuana’ march for Feb. 26

The Rastafarian Community will be holding a march from Buxton, East Coast Demerara to the Square of the Revolution in Georgetown on February 26, 2018 in an effort to erase the stigma attached to marijuana.

The march is aimed at fighting against discrimination which members of the Rastafarian Community face on a daily basis.

“If we in a minibus and you have four or five rasta man in the minibus and police have a road block, they will call them out and search them. It’s discrimination,” Ras Benghai Trug told News Room during an interview on Tuesday.

Ras Trug said the community is not asking for much; they want Rastafarians to be allowed to legally have at least two ounces of marijuana in their possession and five plants in their yards.

“When we go to pray, we must have marijuana for it is our sacrament. We supposed to be having about five trees in our yards grown so we can pick for our uses,” Ras Trug stated.

He noted that there can still be limitations and persons can be fined or jailed for possession of large amounts of cannabis.

The community leaders are contending that the decriminalisation of marijuana will address the overcrowding in prisons and contribute to the green economy.

“If we are looking to a green economy, a green Guyana, we cannot exempt the marijuana plant. It repairs the ozone layer,” Ras Trug stated.

The Alliance For Change (AFC) faction of the coalition Government was mandated by its youth arm to push for reforms to laws that imprison persons for the possession of small quantities of marijuana.

Attorney Nigel Hughes, the then chairman of the AFC, had compiled a draft legislation which seeks to soften penalties for marijuana possession.

AFC Parliamentarian Michael Carrington had presented the Bill to the National Assembly, however, it is yet to come up for debate.

The Rastafarian community is contending that studies have proven that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol and tobacco. They argue that a smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about 15 minutes to die of an overdose.