The ganja law of 1913: 100 years of oppressive injustice
By Louis MOYSTON
THIS year marks the 100th anniversary of the Ganja Law of 1913. This law
was rooted in fear and also in a tradition of law-making that
discriminated against lower class black people. It is a racist law that
epitomises the oppressive injustice of slavery and the colonial/planter
system. This racist law was the idea of the Council of Evangelical
Churches in Jamaica. The Law gave the police special powers which
members of the force used, in a brutal and repressive manner, against
the people in general and the Rastafarians in particular. The Ganja Law
of 1913 must be abolished and replaced by a new regime. The earliest
debates on ganja were informed by elite white perception and anecdotal
evidence. They lacked the philosophical, logical and scientific
perspectives.
The history of ganja and the Jamaican society is interesting and
instructive. It is interesting because of the major characters and
setting associated with the Law of 1913 and its subsequent amendments.
It is instructive because it illustrates the brutal nature of law-making
process in post-slavery society, and its oppressive application against
the masses, lower class black people. The emergence of the campaign and
preparation of this oppressive instrument, the 1913 Law and its
Amendment in the 1920's, was led by the Church and white elites. During
the 1930's and 1940s the newspaper in combination with elite perception,
the police and the Resident Magistrate were the major characters in the
amendments in that period. In the pre-and post- Independence period the
government through the Ministries of Home Affairs and later the
Minister of Health led the ganja debate of the 1960s and 1970s. Today it
is the Minister of Justice who plays the lead role for the government
in the current ganja debate. The planter-controlled society meted out
severe punishment to black labourers in the form of extremely high fines
for penalties from court cases in the post-emancipation period. The
fine for ganja, "a victimless crime", was exorbitant for people who had
little or no money. When the fines were not effective as deterrent, they
were combined with mandatory imprisonment. It was this law that
introduced "mandatory imprisonment" in the jurisprudence landscape of
Jamaica. This measure did not curb the use of ganja.
At the end of the 19th century into the early 20th century, the church
in Jamaica saw its power declining. There were the emergence of the
revivalist movements and also an increasing of vices — use of opium,
ganja and alcohol. It felt that it had the moral obligation to curb, if
not destroy these vices. Many newspaper reports have illustrated the
issues of the church regarding ganja smoking among the "natives"; and
also its association of ganja to insanity. In 1912 there was an Opium
Convention at The Hague. There were also increasing concerns in Jamaica
on ganja smoking among the "natives". According to one study, the
Council of Evangelical Churches prepared the Law and sent it to the
Legislative Council in 1912. It was not acted upon. In the same period
the newspaper published that out of 283 people admitted admitted to
using ganja. About the same period there was another article on the
"Dangers of ganja smoking among the natives of this colony" illustrating
the dangers of ganja smoking now that there is increasing evidence of
ganja smoking among black people. The white elites associated violence
with ganja smoking; and since they perceive black people as 'brutes'
they developed narratives of the 'evils of ganja smoking' among lower
class blacks. During the colonial/planter rule racism was the order of
the day; and high fines as oppressive penalties were meted out against
lower class black people for the simplest of crimes. The matter of race
emerged again in the mid-1960s was raised by government Senator Ronald Irvine in the ganja debate with Opposition Senator Ken McNeil.
The Ganja Law of 1913 was employed against the "cultivation and
importation" of ganja, punishable by a fine of one hundred pounds or up
to 12 months imprisonment. The same Council of Evangelical Movement
observed that the Law of 1913 was "practically useless". According to
reports the Church called for amendments for smoking selling and
entering premises upon which ganja is grown by the police. There was no
regard for the rights of man on how he used his private property. This
reflection on the second amendment took at the time of the 1924 UN Opium
conference in Geneva. The 1924 Amendment, inspired by the Church called
for drastic increased of fines and imprisonment on first conviction. It
was renamed "Dangerous Drug Law of 1924". The 1930 and 1940's was
marked with the rise of the early Rastafari movement and the role of
lower class black people resisting oppression. The leading newspaper
and the white elites began a national campaign against ganja against
their fears about the plant. The police and the Resident Magistrates of
the parishes were the leading characters in the amendment of the 1924
Law. There was concern that ganja smoking may have been associated with
the uprisings among the masses in 1938. The 1937 Marijuana Tax Act may
have provided propaganda during the period.
The 1940s amendment was, in part, a response to the emergence of Leonard
P. Howell and the early Rastafari movement. The development of the
Ganja amendments in the 1960's was also associated with radical activism
by Rasta and also violence associated with the Henry back-to-Africa
movement. It was the period of the "Coral Gardens Affairs" that the
amendments of the 1960s took place. New developments in Jamaican
politics in the 1970s and influence from scientific developments about
ganja smoking, smashed the anecdotal allegations of the past. This led
to profound change of the ganja law in the 1970s by removing the list of
criminal activities associated with the law and its mandatory
imprisonment characteristic. A study of Ganja Smoking in Jamaica
completed by Rubin and Comitas in 1972 may have also had influence on
the ganja debates of the 1970s. Changes in the USA during the 1990s and
2000s, have influenced levels of ganja lobbying in Jamaica that led to
the Chevannes Commission in 2000 and the current initiative led by the
Minister of Justice, Minister Mark Golding, respectively. The time has
come for a new regime for ganja, similar to the license and regulation
of alcohol. According to Fraser (1974) in his study on the ganja laws in
the region, the eradication of ganja is impossible and the time has
come for a new legal regime.
Louis EA Moyston
thearchives01@yahoo.com
December 02, 2013Jamaica Observer
