Towards social justice and economic empowerment? Exploring Jamaica’s progress with implementing cannabis law reform

Ganja and the Laws of Men: Cannabis Decriminalization and Social (In)Justice in Jamaica

“…The ethnographic method—being in the “field” observing and participating in people’s daily lives; establishing and maintaining relationships with informants; informal interviews and conversations—is a critical toolkit for unpacking the impact of cannabis policy in the lives of Rastafarians. It allows us to understand the impacts and consequences of old and new policies and politics “from a bottom-up perspective” (Klein et al, 2022).…”

“…If that would be the case, they were thinking to sell their smalls pieces of land and move in with family members who live in Kingston. As Klein and colleagues (2022, p. 2703) concluded from their more recent fieldwork with Jamaican ganja farmers, “The structural barriers, financial costs and regulatory hurdles perceived by farmers in transitioning from illegal to legal enterprise may undermine their interest in the legal scheme in the long run. Hence, the question for the future implementation of DDAA remains how to make the legal scheme an attractive alternative to the business-as-usual practice of farming ganja for the illegal recreational market.”…”

“…Since I carried out my own research, a number of researchers have conducted studies in Jamaica (e.g., Hanson, 2020; Klein & Hanson, 2020; Klein et al, 2022; Rychert et al, 2020) even though their focus were not Rastafarian ganja farmers specifically, and further research among Rastas would contribute to expand our knowledge of the impacts of the DDAA 2015 on traditional populations.…”

“…The article concludes that the state violence embedded in the historical ganja laws and policies in Jamaica should not be forgotten in the ongoing process of decriminalization. So far, the DDAA brought “some social justice gains at the grassroots and cannabis consumer level (i.e., decriminalization) and economic profits for the Jamaican business class (and overseas investors),” with the state benefiting from revenue and saving with criminal justice system costs (Klein et al, 2022, p. 14). Small and traditional ganja farmers are being left out of this green wave of profit, when the DDAA could be mobilized to focus on social justice and reparations for those harmed by one century of prohibitionist drug policies.…”

“…Since the 1940s, the Jamaican state has systematically used force and the legislation against ganja to intimidate and incarcerate Rastas (Aı ¨nouche, 2022;Dunkley, 2012Dunkley, , 2013Dunkley, , 2018Hill, 1983Hill, , 2001Hutton et al, 2015). Recent literature and conversations with informants show that Rastas, as well as other people historically involved in the cultivation, uses, and commerce of the plant are being excluded from the profits and benefits brought by the new policy (Goffe, 2018;Klein et al, 2022). Foreign and local wealthy investors are seizing the market, a trend that has been observed and criticized in other contexts of decriminalization and legalization as well (Bandosz & Wilczek, 2021;Ejeckam, 2019;Harris & Martin, 2021;Siebert, 2020;Title, 2022;Vélez-Torres et al, 2021) and which, in Jamaica, makes the transition of traditional farmers to the legal market a distant or impossible reality.…”