JAMAICA CONSIDERS LEGALIZING MARIJUANA

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Imagine a lush, tropical land just a few hundred miles
off the U.S. coast where marijuana, although illegal, is a cultural icon
worshiped by thousands and so plentiful it goes for just $26 a pound.

Now, imagine this place when it's legal.

That's precisely what Jamaica's government-appointed National Commission on
Ganja has been doing for the last nine months.

Led by the dean of social sciences at Kingston's University of the West
Indies, the seven-member commission has heard from more than 150 people and
institutions ranging from the Medical Association of Jamaica to the
Rastafarian Centralization Organization, and it has sounded out more than a
dozen communities nationwide.

This month, the official body will present its final recommendations on
whether marijuana should be decriminalized here.

An interim report that Commission Chairman Barry Chevannes presented to
Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson in May gave no clear indication
whether the commission will endorse decriminalization, a recommendation
that would be put to Parliament for a vote.

The Bush administration isn't likely to welcome decriminalization. Even
under then-President Clinton, the State Department and the Drug Enforcement
Administration consistently expressed concern over Jamaica's large
marijuana crop and its exports to U.S. markets.

Chevannes said the commission seriously is considering the "external
consequences" of its recommendation.

Beyond a potential U.S. condemnation, they include a possible snowball
effect on other marijuana-producing Caribbean islands that have considered
decriminalizing the plant in the past.

Privately, U.S. and Jamaican law enforcement officials say the island's
marijuana trade has been eclipsed by its more lucrative role as a stopover
point for Colombian cocaine shipments bound for the United States - a
multibillion-dollar industry that is fueling gang wars in Kingston, the
capital, and a murder rate that ranks among the highest in the world.

Some proponents of decriminalization say Jamaican police could focus more
resources on combating the cocaine trade if relieved of targeting ganja;
last year, police officials say, they seized more than 6 tons of marijuana
and destroyed more than 1,000 acres of the plant.

Yet ganja remains plentiful, readily available and cheap; a pound of the
Jamaican herb that goes for $26 here can fetch more than $1,500 in the
United States.