Hayles sides with small ganja farmers

WESTERN BUREAU:

PEOPLE’S NATIONAL Party (PNP) Vice-President Ian Hayles is lobbying the Government to grant small local farmers the licence to become legitimate players in the local ganja industry.

Hayles, who is now locked in a selection battle with Westmoreland Municipal Corporation Councillor Garfield Jones to represent the PNP in the Western Westmoreland constituency in the next general election, is suggesting that the Government license local farmers to grow the weed, and then give them 10 years to pay for the licence.

“The Government must give them (small hemp and ganja farmers) the licence and give them a 10-year moratorium to pay for it,” said Hayles, noting that there is limited scope for them in the current framework.

“It was the small, indigenous farmers who suffered prosecution and imprisonment for planting, preserving, and protecting it (ganja) for many decades, and they are now being pushed out of the industry,” Hayles noted.

All applicants are required to pay a non-refundable processing fee (per licence application) of US$300 (approximately J$45,000) for an individual application; and US$500 (J$75,000) for all other category submissions.

LEGAL STREAMS

Hayles supports calls by the Westmoreland Hemp and Ganja Farmers Association (WHGFA) for the creation of a ganja free zone in Western Westmoreland, and believes that reducing the cost of acquiring a cannabis licence represents the best opportunity for small farmers to get into the business of growing and selling ganja and its by-products for both recreational and medicinal uses.

Responding to complaints that small farmers were being left out of what is considered a multibillion-dollar industry, the Government spearheaded an initiative dubbed the Alternative Development Programme (ADP), which was designed to help farmers who are growing ganja illegally to formalise themselves. However, based on the feedback from groups like the WHGFA, that initiative failed.

That effort, which took place in 2017 under the umbrella of the Cannabis Licensing Authority, saw the commencement of work on two pilot projects under the ADP, which was mandated to prevent and eliminate the illicit cultivation of ganja and, instead, put growers’ efforts into legal streams to fulfil the 1998 action plan. The latter was designed to target 16 communities and approximately 128 small, traditional cannabis farmers for support.

However, Delroy Johnson, chairman of the WHGFA, whose members are behind the petition to create the cannabis free zone, says it presents the best opportunity for small farmers to gain a foothold in the local industry.

“What we need now is not money from the Government, just a legal framework,” explained Johnson, owner of a successful tourism business in Negril.

albert.ferguson@gleanerjm.com