- -----Original Message----- From: (MAPNews) Sent: Thursday, December 17, 1998 11:03 PM To: Economist, The (UK) Contact: http://www.economist.com/ Copyright: 1998. The Economist Newspaper Limited. Pubdate: Sat, December 12, 1998 YEOMAN OF THE WEED Trinidad American marines flew helicopters around the forested slopes of St Vincent's SoufrE8re volcano this week, ferrying Caribbean police and soldiers to hot spots where air photos show fields of marijuana. The island's ganja farmers, to use their word, had been tipped off. Some took an early harvest. More significantly, this time the farmers chose to do what most other businesses do all the time - they lobby. With the raids imminent, the Committee of Concerned Citizens and Ganja Farmers sat down on November 17th with the island's highly respectable Chamber Industry and Commerce. They wrote to non-inhaling Bill Clinton. They held meetings and demonstrations. And they asked, without success, to meet Sir James Mitchell, the prime minister, whose formal request for American help initiated the raids. Drug barons? Hardly. Most of the few hundred growers are models of hard work and enterprise, growing a crop that few West Indians see as criminal at all. Few dirty their hands with the island's cocaine trafficking. These are small businessmen, proud of their hard-earned houses and pick-up trucks. Their crop is consumed locally or exported to nearby islands. Who suffers? About all of St Vincent's economy can boast of is bananas, off-shore banking, tourism, and ganja farming. With its tourism no pile of gold, its small-scale banana growers now under pressure from competition and American trade bullies, it is crazy, say the ganja farmers, to crack down on them. Why not decriminalise their crop and let them get on with the job? That is not as reasonable as it sounds. The ganja trade, like that of cocaine, helps corrupt the entire Caribbean. The United States would never agree to decriminalisation. And if it did, or itself legalised marijuana, the price of ganja would probably collapse. What best suits the ganja farmers, though they are loath to admit it, is continued illegality - but enforced, at worst, only with plenty of warning. - --- Checked-by: Don Beck