YEOMAN OF THE WEED

Trinidad

American marines flew helicopters around the forested slopes of St
Vincent's SoufrE8re volcano this week, ferrying Caribbean police and
soldiers to hot spots where air photos show fields of marijuana. The
island's ganja farmers, to use their word, had been tipped off. Some
took an early harvest. More significantly, this time the farmers chose
to do what most other businesses do all the time - they lobby.

With the raids imminent, the Committee of Concerned Citizens and Ganja
Farmers sat down on November 17th with the island's highly respectable
Chamber Industry and Commerce. They wrote to non-inhaling Bill
Clinton. They held meetings and demonstrations. And they asked,
without success, to meet Sir James Mitchell, the prime minister, whose
formal request for American help initiated the raids.

Drug barons? Hardly. Most of the few hundred growers are models of
hard work and enterprise, growing a crop that few West Indians see as
criminal at all. Few dirty their hands with the island's cocaine
trafficking. These are small businessmen, proud of their hard-earned
houses and pick-up trucks. Their crop is consumed locally or exported
to nearby islands. Who suffers? About all of St Vincent's economy can
boast of is bananas, off-shore banking, tourism, and ganja farming.
With its tourism no pile of gold, its small-scale banana growers now
under pressure from competition and American trade bullies, it is
crazy, say the ganja farmers, to crack down on them. Why not
decriminalise their crop and let them get on with the job?

That is not as reasonable as it sounds. The ganja trade, like that of
cocaine, helps corrupt the entire Caribbean. The United States would
never agree to decriminalisation. And if it did, or itself legalised
marijuana, the price of ganja would probably collapse. What best suits
the ganja farmers, though they are loath to admit it, is continued
illegality - but enforced, at worst, only with plenty of warning.

Checked-by: Don Beck