No matter how much evidence is given to the medical benefits of ganja (marijuana) our lawmakers eyes are blinkered and their ears are deaf.

No matter how many are the appalling aftereffects of all the legalized drugs the pharmaceutical companies dish out to us that is acceptable. Our legislators are comfortable with the warning labels.

No matter how many injections we see advertised to combat hordes of new long almost unpronounceable names given to common disorders that very few of us will experience in our lifetime, but have a long list of complications associated from the injections, that is acceptable.

No matter that our war on illegal drugs is lost and has been for some time, our lawmakers continue with the same tactics to fight with.

Insane isn’t it?

Sir Ronald Sanders in his latest Viewpoint Commentary “Good sense on drugs absent at the UN” is 100% correct. See today’s iNews Cayman and please read it. Also read our story published today “Caribbean urges rethink of approach in combating drug problem”.

I hope our MLA’s read both stories.

Sanders starts his commentary with:

“For a brief moment it appeared that good sense would prevail and the international community would ditch the failed ‘war on drugs’ policy. But, all hopes were dashed at the United Nations General Assembly special session on drugs (UNgass) between April 19 and 21 in New York.

“Sadly, the UN maintained prohibitionist policies banning narcotics use and, by doing so, left producers and traffickers delighted with an illegal trade worth billions of dollars. The retained policy also continues the criminalisation of users of small quantities; deploys security and police forces into costly exercises that deflects them from tackling serious criminal activity; fills prisons with young people; frightens addicts from seeking medical attention lest they be imprisoned; and perpetuates a system that allows the unfair branding of countries, such as many in the Caribbean, as complicit in drug trafficking.”

Sir Ronald has a superb way with words – every one straight to the point, like a knife and plain common sense.
The three Latin American countries that courageously proposed the UN meeting were emboldened in their decision by a voluminous report commissioned by the Organisation of American States (OAS) in 2013 on a mandate from heads of government of its 34 member-states.

A telling paragraph in the report, entitled ‘The Drug Problem in the Americas’, observes that: “Public policies devised over the past several decades to address the drug issue in the Hemisphere have not proved sufficiently flexible to draw in the new evidence needed to make them more effective, to detect unintended costs and damages, and to embrace recent economic and cultural changes. We need to develop and generate additional methods, evidence, analysis, and evaluation, to learn from both successes and failures, to adapt standards to the needs and characteristics of each specific environment, and to take into account the net impact in terms of costs and benefits of applying particular policies in a given country and society as well as for all our countries and societies”.

Not all was bad, however.

It is an acceptance of flexibility in interpreting the UN conventions on drugs so that each country can “implement national policies according to local circumstances and challenges”.

Jamaica can continue with its decriminalised possession of small amounts of marijuana, its legalization of the sacramental use of marijuana by Rastafarians, and its established provisions for the medical, scientific and therapeutic uses of the plant.

Sanders states, “That should be standard fare across the Caribbean.”

Unfortunately, here in the Cayman Islands, it is our horses that do not wear blinkers, but our politicians.