By Peter Polack

A new government of old faces was ushered into the Cayman Islands with a novice Premier at the end of April this year along with a hopeful referendum approval to decriminalize marijuana. This democratic result brought an apparent end to  decades of oppression of recreational use that would go the same way as past irreconcilable prohibitions on visiting black people with a certain, hair style, namely dreads. Yes, ridiculous as it seems today, it was a thing.

This apparently unpalatable ball was kept in the air by the obsolete referral of the popular referendum result to the bobbing heads of the Law Reform Commission.

Even more ridiculous was a recent celebration of the government’s first one hundred years in office not of any accomplishments but imaginary decisive action and ambitious blurred vision.

The powers that be have clearly not understood that blowhard trumpeting has been erased long ago by the daily reality of social networking voters crying about such small man matters as cost of living, mortgage and the greatest devil, the electricity bill. 

The government has not included the people’s directive on ganja in their first 100 days because the truth is it may take 100 years.

Bermuda legislated the decriminalization of personal cannabis use in 2017 only to have the UK government overrule this proposal through their local viceroy in 2022. They are a colony just like Cayman and must now bow to their British betters.

The proposal for the Cayman Islands will go in the direction of the same pipe dream until the UK itself removes penalties and criminal records associated with personal, private use of ganja.They may then royally extend their privilege to us.

Most of the rest of the independent Caribbean countries have decriminalized and legalized along with much of the sensible outside world. It has had some nonsensical complications.

Belize has seen a rash of American visitors bringing ganja to a country that has long legalized it’s use resulting in court proceedings and in at least one case, imprisonment.

The bigger fear in Cayman cannot be the penalty but the long arm effect effect of a criminal conviction for youthful or adult folly for the foreseeable future. Perhaps the still new government will take a sensible and serious look at other youthful convictions that deny anyone opportunity.

The answer can be found in the book of Matthew.

Whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant.

Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer in the Cayman Islands. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013); Jamaica, The Land of Film(2017); and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities 1940-88.

NOTE: The views/opinions expressed above are Peter Polack’s own.

Peter Polack