IN JAMAICA: 'Stop prosecuting people with ganja, burning fields' ....."Please, Mr Government, ask you police and the army to stop digging down the world number one brand ganja," Ras Arthur Newland shouted out emphatically.

BY TANESHA MUNDLE Observer staff reporter mundlet@jamaicaobserver.com  Monday, March 31, 2014    

AS Government contemplates the decriminalisation of ganja, some pro-weed advocates want the authorities to immediately end the practice of arresting people for having ganja and destroying ganja fields.

These were among a number of concerns and questions raised at yesterday's preparatory meeting for the Ganja Future Growers and Producers Association (GFGPA) at the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica auditorium on Trafalgar Road in Kingston.

International Rastafarian Ambassador Rasta Irie Lion (right)
 makes a point during Sunday's preparatory meeting
 for the Ganja Future Growers and Producers Association
 at the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica auditorium
 on Trafalgar Road in Kingston. Seated at left (front row)
 is reggae icon Bunny Livingstone Wailer.
 (PHOTO: JOSEPH WELLINGTON)

"Please, Mr Government, ask you police and the army to stop digging down the world number one brand ganja," Ras Arthur Newland shouted out emphatically.

"We believe the persecution and the lock up for ganja must stop immediately," he declared during the well attended meeting which heralds the formal launch of the association set for April 5, 2014 at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston.

Another Rastafarian, Brother Trevor, who bemoaned the arrest of his friend, Ras Puddler of Westmoreland, who was arrested after he publicly declared in the Jamaica Observer that he planted ganja, was also of the opinion that individuals should not be persecuted for the weed while Government moved toward decriminalisation.

"How we can go forward knowing that the Jamaican Government is still funding and aiding the destruction of ganja fields, locking up people and burning ganja?" he asked. "How we can go forward with decriminalisation, much more legalisation, when we still accepting all these aids?".

But Paul Burke, programmes director for the association, while agreeing with the move for the enforcers not to persecute individuals for ganja said he was not in support of the call for them to leave the ganja fields. more