Gordon Forte ContributorStabroek News, January 4, 2016
Dear Editor
Respect to Bertrand Stuart, your correspondent on marijuana law enforcement, but I think he is misinterpreting concerns over the victimization of petty offenders as promoting wholesale decriminalization (‘There needs to be an understanding of the properties of cannabis…’ SN, January 1).
You don’t have to be a dope-head to know that marijuana contains varying proportions of THC, which makes you high and messes up your head, and CBD, which is under increasing commercial demand for medical uses. Not to mention the potential of other products from the hemp plant.
But you’d have to be asleep in Guyana not to know that enforcement against possession of marijuana, like many other laws, is all about dishonest policing, in extortion at the bottom of the society.
In a new Guyanese industry for the modern cultivation of selected strains of cannabis, with onsite conversion of the medical product for export, the necessary security would not be a greater challenge than in the gold industry. Appropriate regulation would be subject, though, to the same tendencies and capabilities to evade and corrupt the law.
But that’s a different story, and should not be allowed to obscure a major opportunity to benefit from the competitive advantages of our geography.
Yours faithfully,
Gordon Forte
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