'nuff
ganja  no problems
       for visitors

Although we planned to return to Jamaica in as short a time as possible, our dream did not become a reality until forty-four months later on December 4th, 1994, when we arrived at Montego Bay Airport to spend two months in Jamaica, mostly around Ocho Rios, St. Ann. We want to share this beautiful experience with all of our friends and freedom activists.

We unloaded our belongings and had Junior drop us off with our friend Rusty in Falkland/Mansfield Heights. The Heights is a recently extended community sitting on a hill overlooking Ocho Rios, where residents miraculously grow plants on stone.

We arrived at Rusty's place about eight p.m. on a Sunday, and everyone around was in a state of absolute bliss. Someone handed one spliff to Jan and another to me. This was our first toke of Jamaican ganja in forty-four months, and I must tell you that after twenty-four hours of travelling this was a delightfully refreshing and invigorating treat.

The vast spread in price certainly does not have anything to do with quality. In Jamaica the free market economy means the seller extorts as much as possible from the buyer. If the product is needed bad enough the buyer will pay the asking price. So it is with ganja or anything else you buy on the island. One way to beat the high prices charged to visitors is to have a trusted native friend do your shopping.

If you are shopping for ganja, be very discreet and don't buy on the streets. It is a crime to possess, smoke, plant, or have anything to do with ganja in Jamaica.

In 1980 the US Government introduced paraquat (Agent Orange, the deadly defoliant used in Vietnam) to the Jamaican government to spray and destroy ganja fields. The spraying continues to this day, even though paraquat was banned in the United States in the late 70's because of its toxicity and damaging effects upon the human nervous system and reasoning ability.

The Jamaican government, with help from the US, may have succeeded in wiping out a few ganja fields, destroying the economic lifeline of a few farmers and their families, but what is most frightening are the effects of the deadly chemical paraquat on the humans, animals, plants, water supply, and soil exposed to it.

In Jamaica, it's the Dangerous Drugs Law they get you on for possession of ganja, although almost every Jamaican person on the island (including doctors, judges, lawyers, and police officers), uses ganja in one form or another, benefits from ganja in one form or another, and knows that ganja is harmless and is actually the most valuable and beneficial plant on earth for both man and animal.

For two months we continued our research project. We interviewed people who have been smoking ganja for fifty or more years. Their youthfulness, vigor, and wisdom were remarkable.

Jamaican citizens live in absolute fear of the police and soldiers. There are no major resistance or anti-prohibition movements on the island. People don't talk about ganja. It would appear as though everyone has a thorough knowledge of the many medicinal and healing properties of the plant, but few, very few, know of the many industrial and commercial products that can be produced from the leaves, stalks, and roots of the ganja plant.

What is most outrageously immoral is the blindness and the indifference expressed by politicians and big business. Jamaica is a small island-nation with nearly 45% unemployment, an income level at one twentieth that of the United States, overwhelming poverty, crimes of violence because of paraquat poisoning reaching epidemic proportions, children going without food, and a host of other degrading social conditions. Yet the government continues to criminalize a plant that could erase all the above negatives and create an enormously beneficial multi-dimensional industry, employing several hundred thousand people in clean, non-polluting, energy-saving, life-giving industries.

Jamaica is a paradise prison for both rich and poor. The prison walls are fear, corruption, uncontrolled violence, and denial, the manifestations of which are seen, heard, and felt everywhere by everyone. Only love, integrity, and compassion can heal the land and its people.

All things considered, the lush scenic beauty, the warmth and friendliness of the country people, the fresh fruits and tasty dishes, the seductive beaches, and the sweet smell of ganja filling the air after dark, all added up to a very pleasant adventure.

In spite of the agonizing threat of going to prison, I was surprised at the expression of freedom by some Jamaicans. They openly smoke a spliff on the street and vocalize their contempt for the immoral law. In fact, it appears that the law also enjoys smoking ganja. Early one evening we stopped at a friend's shop off the Ocho Rios main road, and were introduced to a fully uniformed police officer sitting in a back room enjoying a spliff the size of a cigar and wrapping a fist-full of ganja in a piece of newspaper which he placed in the baton pouch of his pants.

In one village in St. Ann I went to the store to pick up a newspaper and was invited by a group of young people to have breakfast under a big tree in an open field about two hundred feet off the road. It was about 10am when I arrived. The cook handed me a cup of corn meal porridge and a young priest gave me a giant spliff. This was quite an experience: being with about twenty-five young people at 10 o'clock on a weekday morning, enjoying home grown, home cooked, healthy, nutritious food, listening to Psalms and affirmations, and smoking ganja sitting under a shade tree on the side of a hill overlooking the blue and silver ocean. Is this not joyful living?

The number of Jamaicans, young and old, who smoke lots of ganja every day is absolutely amazing. Members of the Rastafari faith who use ganja as a religious sacrament have petitioned the government to recognize their religious freedom but have not yet been able to secure a favourable response. Prohibition does not deter them, even though the police often disrupt their worship and haul them off to jail.

In churches, on the streets, and in their homes, Rastafarians are harassed, brutalized, and terrorized by police because of their sacred herb. Yet they continue with indomitable faith to embrace the wisdom and healing benefits of ganja.

The almost seven year project was carried out by the universities of Massachusetts, Miami, and the Carleton University in Ottawa. Funds were provided by the US National Institute of Drug Abuse and the March of Dimes. The study involved sixty pregnant women: thirty ganja smokers and thirty non-ganja, non-cigarette, non-alcohol users. The results were published in The Daily Gleaner, Jamaica's leading newspaper, and were positively astounding.

The conclusion was drawn that smoking marijuana did not have a single damaging effect on the unborn or mother. After a six year follow-up, all thirty of the ganja babies were shown to be equivalent to the non-ganja babies in all areas of childhood development: growth, motor skills, intelligence, and comprehension.

Over a year ago, Friends International wrote a letter to the Honourable P.J. Patterson, Prime Minister of Jamaica. We requested a thirty day lifting of the ban against ganja use, so as to allow people from all over the world to come together in a spirit of Love and Friendship and celebrate Hempfest '95 in April. The Prime Minister responded with insults, puritanism, and threats. His letter is proof positive of a nation in total denial, and demonstrates the stranglehold that the United States has on the economy and culture of Central and South America, and the Caribbean Islands.

Strange as it may sound, Jamaican people are looking toward Canada to repeal prohibition and just say "NO" to the lies and propaganda of the United States. Then we will all watch the domino effect of the many falling nations now being held hostage to US imperialism, cultural genocide, and terrorist actions.