Ganja Decriminalization and the Drugs (Amendment) Bill 2019, Trinidad and Tobago

Ganja decriminalization T&T style

The Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Bill 2019 is laid in the Parliament of T&T and its clauses reveal the politics of decriminalization from the perspective of the present government. Already on the local government 2019 campaign trail this bill has been cited as the magic n bullet to wrest control of the ganja market from gangland T&T. In keeping with the politics of the day in the west, these claims are being made devoid of context, with no reference to reality on the ground, simply delusional pie in the sky.

The Reality

T&T has the largest volume of imports of ganja in the Caribbean island chain imported solely for local consumption. T&T has the largest import based ganja local consumption market in the Caribbean. T&T has the most lucrative import based ganja market in the Caribbean island chain which shows all the symptoms of Dutch disease. This ganja market where demand outstrips supply is under the control of transnational organised crime as ganja from multiple sources are sucked into this traffickers market where they set prices because of the intense demand/supply imbalance. Transnational organised crime deliberately under-supplies the market which supports outrageous prices for imported product of questionable purity and efficacy. This grave imbalance of demand and supply heightened by the deliberate restriction of supply to drive up prices spawned and drives the ganja wars of the 21^st century which are not abating. One result of these market forces is the price for a pound of local, high potency, organic non-compressed ganja at TTD 10,000. A commodity worth killing and to die for. Product is today sourced from Colombia via Venezuela, St Vincent, Guyana, Jamaica, the USA and Canada such is the potency of demand on the local ganja market. Prohibition in T&T has then failed miserably to curb demand for ganja across generational lines where the level of acceptance of ganja today as necessary to personal wellness amongst the digital generation outstrips that of the previous generation and dwarfs that of the generations of the 1960s and 1970s which were supposed to be our ganja head generations. The prohibition discourse therefore has no hegemony over the digital generation and its proponents will not go quietly hence the punitive punishment emphasis of the amendment bill.

The volume and value of illicit ganja imports that continuously and sustainably enter T&T and sold on the local ganja market potently indicate the failure of the State to police its borders and stem the corruption of State agencies by transnational organized rime to purchase impunity for their illicit trade. The State and its politicians then resort to policing the end users in their bid to maintain the grand mansion of prohibition for it is the basis of social control. The move to decriminalize the possession of 30 grams and less of ganja whilst buttressing the grand mansion of prohibition attests to the operative political imperative of the moment. The pressing need to illustrate that we deliver to our voter base in an environment of hard times, hand to mouth survival in the midst of gangland on a roll is just one operational reality. What you give with one hand you take with the next as we can only grow four male ganja plants per cycle. This condemns us to become ganja farmers overnight as the rearing of a single female ganja tree is probable cause to bust down on us whilst we reap ganja crops of less than potent and efficacious ganja we need for our personal use. The product of a male ganja tree is pure junk, of no use especially to those using ganja as medicine. The State is now policing four ganja plants to ensure we are growing the allowed type by sex, opening our four plants to policing and criminalisation by denying us access to the female plant which is the premier producer of quality ganja. The message from the politicians is then clear that we must remain consumers never evolve into producers so we either go on the ganja block or access medical marijuana sold at outrageous prices as a result of the monopoly guaranteed by the politicians to the less than 1 per centers waiting in the wings or both. Prohibition on steroids for the masses and for the oligarchs a new licit, high demand industry to bleed us by.

Transnational organised crime, gangland and decriminalization

The amendments will not defuse the ganja wars only intensify them as: demand will move out of the shadows and make itself apparent, palpable. The subsequent scramble for supply will intensify the wars and transnational organised crime will complete its assault to exert hegemony over the ganja supply side of T&T which includes producing and selling legal medical ganja. With the application of the protocols developed by transnational organised crime for retailing in a decriminalized market, ganja blocks that presently operate with purchased impunity will now operate with de facto legalization. The cost of purchased impunity from State agencies will drop whilst gangland attached to transnational organised crime maximizes its profits from the ganja trade. The single most important instrument to impact the ganja wars i.e. the number of plants a person can plant, rear and reap has been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Four male plants is then worse than none at all when what we need are seven plants per person. But seven plants per person places the medical marijuana hustle in jeopardy. In order to justify its intervention vehicle the State refuses to recognize and act upon the ganja wars, the blood letting simply does not matter exposing the worldview of a prohibitionist.

The salient reality is the powerlessness of the State and its politicians to prevent transnational organised crime from exerting hegemony over the legal ganja business in T&T. Wherever the MTTOs are operational in a decriminalized or legalized ganja market they fully exploit these markets just look at the State of California, USA. In the case of T&T demand is not going away no matter what the prohibitionists say and transnational crime dominates the supply side of the market best poised to dominate the present intervention to ensure sustainable hegemony coupled with profit maximization. The present bill is then a boon, a free ride to transnational organised crime and its affiliates in gangland T&T because of the refusal of the politicians to recognize that prohibition has failed and is the cause of the blood letting of the ganja wars. If you don’t have the testicular fortitude to legalize ganja then accept that your only worthwhile intervention in this market is to give persons the right to plant a quantum of ganja plants that will change the supply side dynamics of the market but you cannot do this as it is does not flow with your political DNA.

The creation of retail outlets selling licit ganja termed medical ganja will heighten the present level of criminal violence in T&T as these outlets will be mobbed, robbed and looted to seize their cash and ganja stock in trade as in decriminalized ganja markets this is the new criminal growth enterprise. This will be especially so in T&T given the acute imbalance between demand and supply. Cash earned from the sale of licit ganja in T&T will be banked where? Banks in T&T connected to SWIFT via correspondent banks under the control of the New York Fed face expulsion as in the USA this is drug money, dirty money subject to interdiction and sanction of the correspondent banks. Prohibition for the masses but putting the financial system at existential risk for the oligarchs.

The decriminalization of possession of 30 grams and less of ganja is h not the end of prohibition. In the great mansion of prohibition decriminalization is a very small room and this will expressed via the backlash that will be unleashed whenever the bill becomes law. Expect urine analysis tests when you apply for a job and no job when you test positive, expect more and more drug testing on the job putting the Industrial Court in play given its jurisprudence of treating with a permanent employee with an addiction problem. For due to no lack of trying there is no data to-date that proves ganja use alters the chemistry of the brain to render the brain dependent on the substance. That is what is an addiction. Ganja is not rum, tobacco, crack, meth, Ex etc. Whilst you are policing the end users transnational organised crime trafficks tonnes of ganja at will with impunity. This bill is then faulty legislation which is worst than none at all because it refuses to deal with the specific and unique features of the local ganja market of T&T and when enacted as law the ganja wars, the violence that results will escalate in T&T with no effective rise in economic activity in the licit economy. It is then a boon, a windfall for transnational organised crime. Pax Mexicana!

Now Published Online as e-books!

Massa’s White Supremacist Discourse of West Indian Negro Slavery Deconstructed Volume 2 has been published online as an e-book. This work is a deconstruction of the works of four white supremacists who wrote on the nature of slave societies of Jamaica and the British colonies of the Eastern Caribbean from the late eighteenth century to the 1830s, the threats posed to white hegemony and the strategy to deal with said threats. These authors are: Bryan Edwards foremost discursive agent of white supremacy in the British West Indies who formulated a hegemonic discourse of white supremacy in the British West Indies and led an assault on the abolitionists in the House of Commons of Britain noted for its potency by the abolitionists. Bryan Edwards’ discourse of West Indian white supremacy is potently instructive of the discursive basis of this white discourse revealing the congenital failure especially since independence to deconstruct this discourse thereby silencing the neo-colonial versions that now circulate as fact. Frederic William Naylor Bayley is steeped in Edwards’ discourse of West Indian white supremacy and his work is devoted to proving that the enslaved Africans are not fit for freedom. There must then be a prolonged period of enslavement which will prepare the enslaved for freedom as there is now in the British Eastern Caribbean colonies an ameliorated slavery, an evolved slavery under the rule of law and progressive, modern massas which will prepare the enslaved for freedom at some point in time in the future. Benjamin McMahon is a white supremacist abolitionist who destroys the myth that there was an ameliorated slavery in Jamaica from the abolition of the slave trade to the abolition of slavery. McMahon presents in graphic detail the daily, barbaric operational reality of African enslavement in Jamaica in the early nineteenth century and insights into the evolution of white supremacy in Jamaica. The final author is Mary Nugent wife of the Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica who was resident in Jamaica from 1801 to 1805. Nugent’s discourse of the blackies presents a Christian discourse of the necessity of African enslavement whilst she gives potent insights into British colonial rule and the nature of the social order. Nugent rails against the threat posed by the Haitian Revolution to white supremacy in Jamaica placing this epochal event of African liberation in the context of the reaction by a female white supremacist. The abiding lesson of this text is the potent failure of neo-colonial discourse to grapple with and articulate the reality of West Indian white supremacist discourse as the discourse is servile in the 21^st century to massa ‘s discourse of white supremacy seen in the myths and lies it peddles as fact and history.

Frantz Fanon for the 21^st century volume 3 is now published online as e-book. This is a deconstruction of the writings of Fanon on the Algerian Revolution in a search for insights into the failure and collapse of this revolution in spite of all that Fanon wrote. What is revealed is Fanon’s discourse of revolution being in a state of transition at the time of his death where he was questioning the concepts of revolution he borrowed from western discourse in a search for insights to create a new discourse of revolution applicable to the colonial and neo-colonial world. The grave stress revealed in Fanon’s discourse of revolution in Algeria is the place and position of Islamic discourse in the mechanics of this revolution and Fanon grappling with this reality reveals all the contradictions of being non-white and revolutionary yet defining your world through white discourse. The collapse of the Algerian revolution indicates potently that white ideas of revolution inevitable lead to neo-colonial domination premised on oligarchic rule over the revolution. Did Fanon see flashes of this collapse before the expulsion of the French colonizer was finalized?

Pax Mexicana is in the 4th quarter 2019 Hegemonic over T&T

The MTTOs’ order is now Hegemonic in T&T

I wrote The Myths and Reality of Gangland” on a new order in the process of establish its hegemony over the illicit trades and gangland of T&T. In the final quarter of 2019 the signs on the ground now potently indicate that this hegemony has been attained and is being actively policed and enforced. The wars of Enterprise/Crown Trace are no more, persons spoken of on the ground with fear and awe are dead and their organisations dismantled but there has been no disruption to supply, in fact supply has exploded but only for those affiliated to the MTTOs. The new order of the MTTOs is rapidly changing gangland T&T where those who are now affiliates of the MTTOs are the new haves turned into local and international traffickers with product to play with. The small body of independents who supplied specific sections of gangland and the local market now absorbed by the MTTOs are making the most rapid evolutionary jump as suppliers to the local drug market and international drug traffickers. The ranks of the new haves created by the MTTOs are then the product of a new structure introduced by the business model of the MTTOs to the illicit trafficking order of T&T. This new order of haves has already impacted the social order and will deepen its impact with time as formerly marginalized functionaries of the illicit order of T&T are now players. The quest to earn is now paramount and in order to earn you must abide by the order and discipline of the MTTOs business model. The rationale for the old wars of gangland T&T no longer hold as crews, cliques and sets drawn from supposedly warring factions of gangland T&T now find themselves under the order of the MTTOs. The change in the power relations of gangland T&T on the ground is now apparent for those with the eyes to see as it is now apparent that there is a new order exerting power over the old gangland order.

The strategic discourse and its instruments of power of the apex transnational illicit trafficking organization of all times applied to the illicit order of T&T has created this change which destroyed the old balance of power with those on the receiving end incapable of matching the power of the MTTOs. Indicators of the application of MTTOs power and the strategy driving this action are: the giving up/dropping of dimes/informing on the armories of the those targeted especially collections of AR 15s, illicit enterprises and on perpetrators. This strategy is also applied to international trafficking operations to the US and Europe in those locales. The cleansing of threats posed to the order of the MTTOs and those bent on mindless violence who pose a threat to the business climate of spaces under the control of the MTTOs.. Hegemony is now being policed and enforced towards a disciplined environment conducive to business, to earning.

The flood of product entering T&T for export/transshipment and local consumption is the most important indicator of the hegemony of the new order, whilst interdiction levels no way reflect the volume of product entering and leaving T&T. This flood of imports/exports will be ratcheted up to the point where the national security apparatus is inundated with a tsunami of trafficked product. The marketing of molly is part of this strategy to create a synthetic drug market in T&T as crack cocaine is a sunset market creating a product mix of ganja, cocaine and synthetic drugs for the internal drug market. Cocaine and heroin remains the dominant illicit drugs exported/transshipped with fentanyl added to the product mix. The rising sales of molly, ex and zesser pills indicate the denial that pervades the response of the state and media premised on ignorance. Descriptions of the impact of the use of these synthetic drugs available locally point to the impact of methamphetamine on the user not ex or Molly mixed with cocaine delivered as pills. MTTOs’ industrial grade meth has the purity and potency to deliver the reported impact on the human user when consumed as pills. To mix Molly and cocaine as pills and to deliver such impact to the human user is not in keeping with the pharmacology of both drugs and the cocaine has to be high purity to impact the body when consumed as a pill. Why then do all of that when you have high grade, high potency industrial meth that keeps you zessing for days with all the bad trips that come with this potent crank?

This condition of hegemony of the MTTOs will exert potent pressure on the state of T&T as all state agencies that are charged with engaging with the MTTOs will be the recipient of the onslaught unleashed by the strategy to coerce the state through its corruption by the MTTOs. Organised crime groups already existing in these agencies will be co-opted and exposed to the MTTOs model where they are turned into traffickers in their own right. The end sought is coercion of the state through corrupting especially its armed agencies not state capture, forcing an accommodation between the state and the illicit order under the hegemony of the MTTOs. T&T is now ripe for the picking. Pax Mexicana!

In a very short time from now there will no longer be any need to write on this reality only about the realities that arise from the hegemony of the MTTOs.