From St John’s, Antigua, Gemma Handy (BBC) reports on domestic sales and exports of Caribbean cannabis. She interviews local growers and experts such as Prof Rose-Marie Belle Antoine (University of the West Indies- St Augustine), who speaks about the need for regulation, legalization of exportation, and liberalization of the industry. Read this well-researched article at BBC News. Here are excerpts.
Rub the leaf and inhale the fragrance, Michaelus Tracey is saying. The musky scent of this cannabis plant is distinctly different from the citrusy aroma of another that he is also holding. To the untrained eye, the neat rows of flowering cannabis crops in front of us are indistinguishable from each other. Yet master cultivator Tracey can identify the separate varieties by their smell and the shape of their leaves.
Nine strains are being grown here at Pineapple Road, a farm deep in the countryside on the Caribbean island of Antigua. The warm temperatures, abundant sunshine, and high humidity make this prime territory for growing the plants.
Intense trials were conducted to produce the various strains, Tracey explains. “We wanted different flavour profiles as well as different effects, but all with a medicinal value – something to help you relax, something to give you more energy, more pain relief, less anxiety.”
Cannibis plants thrive in Antigua’s warm, sunny conditions
Last year marked a decade since Jamaica decriminalised the recreational use of cannabis and legalised its production and sale for medical reasons. Several other Caribbean nations, including the twin island country Antigua and Barbuda in 2018, have since followed suit.
Smoking cannabis is emblematic of Caribbean culture, to the extent it has become a cliché. But while the region’s affection for the plant is well documented, its status as a leader in the field is less so.
Today the region is home to a plethora of legally registered cannabis farms and medicinal dispensaries, where both locals and tourists can purchase the drug if they have a valid medical authorisation card.
Yet Prof Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, an expert on the cannabis industry in the Caribbean, believes there needs to be further liberalisation. “Decriminalisation isn’t good enough,” says Antoine, a former chair of the Caribbean Community’s Regional Commission on Marijuana. “We should just make it legal but regulated.”
Antoine is campus principal at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad, where researchers are due to start studying various potential benefits of cannabis. Areas tipped for study range from alleviating the side effects of cancer treatment, to how the plant can boost agriculture by improving soil health. The research will take place in Antigua, where legislation is more progressive.
The work offers “a lot of potential”, she says, but adds that legalisation would make life easier. “The Caribbean is a leader in cannabis, in terms of strains and knowledge, and it has a long tradition of this. But legalities, the ‘war on drugs’ and all that nonsense, stifled not just the industry, but research and development,” says Antoine. [. . .]
Some in the region hope that US President Donald Trump’s executive order in December to reclassify cannabis as a lower-level drug will benefit the Caribbean.
“It’s a significant milestone,” says Alexandra Chong, chief executive of Jamaica-based business Jacana, which sells a range of products derived from cannabis, from extract oil drops to skin cream. “So much US public policy gets filtered down to the Caribbean,” she says. “Because cannabis was classified as a schedule one drug alongside heroin in the US, regulatory bodies across the Caribbean have not been as bullish with [reducing] regulation.” [. . .]
The White House lowering the classification of cannabis may mean that in the future Caribbean nations can export the drug to the US for recreational use. [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62ndp17jv0o