AN INVITATION TO SOCIAL MAYHEM

TREASURE BEACH: IF THE recommendations of the Ganja Commission are to be
taken seriously, then Jamaica will soon become the world's most
sanctimonious sanctuary on earth. Every single piece of real estate will be
fenced in, and louts and idlers will gather in droves behind the fences
blowing their brains out, making asses of themselves and posing a threat to
the rest of us.

I have never read or heard of such an open invitation to ruin or
self-inflicted disaster by any country at any time. It is as if part of the
Commission's terms of reference was to imagine themselves being shot into
space, with no one else around, and then recommending what they think
should be done with the rest of their life in isolation.

Did this Commission really have a sense of the country in which they
reside, and who and what they're dealing with? In one breath, they're
saying its illegal to possess ganja. Yet in another, they say that if
somehow you get it and you fence yourself in, then you are free to smoke
your head off. The act of fencing automatically makes you a sanctuary.

Look out, therefore, for every square inch of rural land to be declared
sanctuaries, free and safe from the reach of the law, but open to others in
the name of dope. Every obeah man will now regain his pride of place once
lost to science and medicine. Forget about going to school. Who needs that?
School is for the unwise, those with nothing to do and without a sense of
purpose. Those who attend school need someone else to tell them what to do.
We smokers get our wisdom from the herb.

The young need not worry

'Bout being left behind

All they need is a hurry

Oh how to blow their mind.

I have great personal and professional respect for Professor Barry
Chevannes, but I ask myself whether he was unwittingly duped into being
misled, by a mission impossible. Does the Commission realise that Jamaica
is part of a world system, including being a signatory to international
treaties and obligations? The US Embassy quite rightly has warned of the
consequences of impulsive, unitary action toward treaty obligations. And
why not? If ganja with all its personal, collective and social harm is to
be embraced with such gusto, can harder drugs be far behind? Just think of
the additional pressures that will be applied to the already overburdened
health system. Can you not imagine the excruciating pressures that will now
be placed on the system by a multitude of zealots? Look at the mounting
demands for beds, treatment, personnel, counselling and rehabilitation.
Where are these to come from? And who pays? And how do you prevent victims
from committing other mind-altering offences against people and property.
And what of the other direct and indirect harms of smoking?

In an age when all forms of smoking have been proven to be so disastrous to
humans, what useful purpose can be served by these recommendations? A
society already suffused with idleness, illiteracy, inertia, laziness and
excuses, can well do without such arrant thoughtlessness.

The suggestions are most unrealistic and should be dismissed out of hand.
Otherwise they will constitute an invitation to social mayhem. And those
who wish to quote poetic sanctimonious rubbish about "If I must die" should
go ahead and do just that.

All I say, is that you have no authority to take the rest of the society
with you.

And while government is busy considering the recommendations to
decriminalise ganja, might I suggest that they consider at the same time,
the criminalising of folly.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Folly is often more cruel in its consequences, than malice is in its intent.