Medicinal ganja boosts Jamaica tourism

[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

I keep saying it time and time again, politicians in Trinidad are too ignorant of science and as a result this is the state of our economy. The PNM is by far the most dotish out of them all, we are yet again missing the boat on this extremely important timeline where the cannabis market is just right for boosting our Forex, creating new JOBS etc but again we will miss the boat and then years down the road we will be trying to play catch up when it is too late.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/medicina ... 886cf45897

I am now reg­is­tered to be able to pur­chase and pos­sess up to two ounces of mar­i­jua­na legal­ly in Ja­maica.

The reg­is­tra­tion process took all of five min­utes and end­ed up cost­ing me US$10.

The taxi ride to and from the dis­pen­sary where I was even­tu­al­ly reg­is­tered and the ho­tel I was stay­ing at took just over an hour at the cost of US$70.

The T&T Guardian vis­it­ed Ja­maica re­cent­ly to be a part of the Ja­maican Prod­uct Ex­change (JAPEX) held at the Mon­tego Bay Con­ven­tion Cen­tre.

Among the hun­dreds of del­e­gates on the JAPEX trade floor was the Can­na Cul­ture Trav­el booth which was be­ing run by To­bi King.

“Can­na Cul­ture Trav­el is a new type of com­pa­ny. We are a lo­cal DMC (des­ti­na­tion man­age­ment com­pa­ny) and we spe­cialise in le­gal cannabis ex­pe­ri­ences in Ja­maica,” King said.

“Peo­ple are un­der the im­pres­sion that it (cannabis) is le­gal here and it is not, it is on­ly le­gal for med­ical use at this point, get­ting the card is very sim­ple.”

On April 15, 2015, amend­ments were made to the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act in Ja­maica. Ac­cord­ing to the Dan­ger­ous Drugs (Amend­ment) Act 2015, pos­ses­sion of two ounces or less of mar­i­jua­na is no longer an of­fence for which one can be ar­rest­ed, charged and have to go to court and it will not re­sult in a crim­i­nal record. How­ev­er, the po­lice may still is­sue a tick­et to a per­son in pos­ses­sion of two ounces or less of mar­i­jua­na and the per­son has 30 days to pay the fine.

Pos­ses­sion of more than two ounces of mar­i­jua­na still re­mains a crim­i­nal of­fence and of­fend­ers can be ar­rest­ed, charged, tried in court and if found guilty, sen­tenced to a fine or to im­pris­on­ment or both. The con­vic­tion will al­so be record­ed on that per­son’s crim­i­nal record.

But Sec­tion 7 D (10) of the Dan­ger­ous Drugs Amend­ment Act 2015 pro­vides an av­enue for vis­i­tors to Ja­maica to ap­ply for an ex­emp­tion for med­ical mar­i­jua­na.

“Per­sons who do not or­di­nar­i­ly re­side in Ja­maica (for ex­am­ple, tourists or vis­it­ing Ja­maicans who live over­seas) may ap­ply for a per­mit to al­low them to law­ful­ly pur­chase and pos­sess up to 2 ounces of gan­ja at a time, for med­ical or ther­a­peu­tic pur­pos­es,” a Fact Sheet pre­pared fol­low­ing the amend­ments by the Min­istry of Jus­tice in Ja­maica stat­ed.

“To ob­tain this per­mit, vis­i­tors will need to pro­duce ev­i­dence that their use of gan­ja has been rec­om­mend­ed or pre­scribed by a li­censed med­ical prac­ti­tion­er in the coun­try where they live. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, they can sign a vol­un­tary de­c­la­ra­tion to con­firm this. The per­mit is is­sued by Ja­maica’s Min­istry of Health, and a fee is payable,” the Min­istry of Jus­tice’s Fact Sheet stat­ed.

Can­na Cul­ture has there­fore utilised this to pro­mote a le­gal cannabis ex­pe­ri­ence in Ja­maica.

The com­pa­ny of­fers a 420 Air­port Trans­fer. 420 is a term that refers to the con­sump­tion of cannabis.

“When you ar­rive (at the Sang­ster In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Mon­tego Bay) you are greet­ed with a box that gives you every­thing you need for a 420 va­ca­tion and then we take you to a dis­pen­sary, it takes you 10 min­utes to get your li­cense and then you can pur­chase,” King said.

In­clud­ed in the box are a lighter, ash­tray and grinder. No mar­i­jua­na is pro­vid­ed in­side the box.

In or­der to legal­ly pur­chase mar­i­jua­na, per­sons have to go to one of the three dis­pen­saries cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing on the is­land. The dis­pen­sary in Mon­tego Bay, known as the Is­land Strains Herb House, is lo­cat­ed on the pop­u­lar Hip Strip along Glouces­ter Av­enue.

Is­land Strains, which is op­er­at­ed by Chris and Maria Gor­don, opened its doors on Au­gust 5. The com­pa­ny is reg­is­tered with the Cannabis Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty in Ja­maica. When the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed a sign was placed on the busy road­way out­side the es­tab­lish­ment let­ting peo­ple know what ex­act­ly is done in­side.

Three cus­tomers were in­side the of­fice when the T&T Guardian en­tered.

In the cor­ner of the of­fice was a nurse dressed in uni­form with a book ti­tled “Cannabis Phar­ma­cy” placed on the ta­ble in front of her. Be­fore any trans­ac­tion could be fa­cil­i­tat­ed, the nurse has to en­sure all cus­tomers can be rec­om­mend­ed for med­ical mar­i­jua­na. I hand­ed her my T&T dri­ver’s per­mit and told her of my is­sues with bron­chi­tis and my bouts of anx­i­ety. She nod­ded, deemed me med­ical­ly fit and gave me a form to sign.

I took that form to the cashier who was five foot­steps away, paid for the rec­om­men­da­tion and was of­fi­cial­ly reg­is­tered in the sys­tem. That reg­is­tra­tion ex­pires in six months’ time, I was told.

On sale were var­i­ous strains of mar­i­jua­na, in­clud­ing pre-rolled ones.

As I left the of­fice I was in­vit­ed by staff at Is­land Strains to the 2727 Lounge which is lo­cat­ed on the same com­pound.

I had heard the name 2727 Lounge at the JAPEX me­dia break­fast the day be­fore from Ja­maica Ho­tel and Tourist As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Omar Robin­son, as he out­lined the ben­e­fits dur­ing his ad­dress.

“No vis­it is com­plete to Mon­tego Bay with­out go­ing to our Hip Strip, which is the life, the en­er­gy of the city. The Hip Strip fea­tures Mar­gar­i­taville, which is for the young and the young at heart, the re­cent­ly re­opened Coral Cliff Gam­ing Lounge, and we have the 2727 mar­i­jua­na lounge, and yes you can go and get your pre­scrip­tion and get your gan­ja ... I can say gan­ja min­is­ter?” Robin­son said.

The min­is­ter Robin­son was re­fer­ring to was Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of Tourism Ed­mund Bartlett, who was al­so on the head ta­ble.

When I en­tered the 2727 Lounge, sev­er­al peo­ple with their JAPEX pass­es were al­ready present re­lax­ing at the sea­side deck and bar.

“We recog­nise that peo­ple trav­el to ful­fil their pas­sions and our job is to build prod­ucts around those pas­sion points,” Bartlett had said dur­ing his ad­dress at the JAPEX me­dia break­fast.

Bartlett said Ja­maica has been reap­ing the ben­e­fits from tourism, with the sec­tor be­ing the on­ly one to have grown con­sis­tent­ly every year for the last 30 years. Last year alone the is­land brought in 500,000 new vis­i­tors, mak­ing it a record-break­ing one for Ja­maica. This year is set to sur­pass those fig­ures, Bartlett said. So far for the year, Ja­maica has brought in 2.9 mil­lion vis­i­tors and earned US$2.1 bil­lion. Bartlett, how­ev­er, said it was too ear­ly to de­ter­mine ex­act­ly how many of those vis­i­tors could be at­trib­uted to the lure of med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na use.

“What we are look­ing at, how­ev­er, is the med­ical and that is very im­por­tant, med­ical and neu­traceu­ti­cal as­pect of mar­i­jua­na, not the recre­ation­al and that is very im­por­tant. So we will be able to have good num­bers down the road as soon as the in­fra­struc­ture for that is prop­er­ly built up, so for now, we con­tin­ue to grow on the ba­sis of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial val­ues of this won­der­ful des­ti­na­tion much to the point that Omar made about how Ja­maica has more at­trac­tions. In oth­er words, there is more to do in des­ti­na­tion Ja­maica than all the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean com­bined and I say that with­out equiv­o­ca­tion and that is a very good po­si­tion to be in,” Bartlett said.

“So what a mar­i­jua­na-in­fused ex­pe­ri­ence will do is just to add val­ue to what is al­ready a very pow­er­ful ar­ray of ex­pe­ri­ences in Ja­maica.”