by Garnet Gibson, Contributor
MANY WILL admit that Jamaica is famous for tourism, reggae music, track and fields and cricket. However, only a few will add ganja to that mix. Foreigners certainly think that we are all here smoking ganja and hanging out under palm trees. On a weekly basis, there is always someone asking me about ganja and its availability in Jamaica. People want to know if I had tried it, others want to know if it is legal and yet others presuppose that I must have smoked it and that it is indeed legal to do so in Jamaica. So Jamaica is already considered a land of ganja and unfortunately for me, ganja smokers!
Many studies have been done on the use of ganja for recreational purposes, and its effect on the user. Studies have also been done on other use of the weed. This includes its medicinal uses and also its use in fashion. Countries like the United States are debating the use of ganja by AIDS patients and other terminally ill individuals. It seems to be generally accepted that ganja is a powerful weed, worthy of the attention it now receives from activists, politicians, and medical experts in Canada, USA, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
The decision by the Barry Chevannes-led Ganja Commission to recommend the legalisation of ganja for personal and religious use will no doubt be controversial, but it is not as outlandish as some may believe, neither is it a given as other may think. The United States is presently deeply engaged in a debate relating to the use of the drug for medicinal purposes. The Institute of Medicine in that country has for many years reported that marijuana does have therapeutic value for "pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting and appetite stimulation".
Indeed, many Jamaicans can attest to the appetite-stimulating effect of ganja, as "users try to eat down the whole house". The AIDS epidemic is maybe the most significant boost for "acceptable" marijuana use worldwide. Voters in at least seven US states have found it too difficult to listen to AIDS sufferers extols the virtues of marijuana, without doing something about it. The voters in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have taken their concern to the voting room and have all voted in favour of marijuana for medicinal purposes.
The official US federal government policy on the matter is that the weed is dangerous and should not be decriminalized, even for medicinal purposes. The report submitted by the Institute of Medicine, which was asked to examine the issue by the Clinton White House was maybe more pro-marijuana than the White House would have liked. It warned however that smoking ganja might cause respiratory disease.
In true American spirit, the Institute called for the development of standardised forms of the drug. In other words, the Institute is asking for the packaging of the weed in pill, capsule or maybe even liquid forms. This ganja branding will certainly provide significant wealth for the pharmaceutical companies; just imagine 'Bayer Ganja', 'Glaxo Weed', 'Vicks Ganja Inhaler' etc. - It could really put a new 'flavour' on the ganja debate. The cannabinoids alongside the Excedrin!
The argument of course is that the medicinal benefits of ganja are compromised by the fact that the user must inhale harmful smoke. Rastas will have a serious problem with that, as many seems to revel in the smoke much more than the weed! A Nyabinghi session without ganja smoke is not even conceivable.
Jamaica will be hard pressed to convince the US to reverse its opposition, or even to reduce the tone of that opposition. The US, even after receiving the pro-ganja report from the Institute of Medicine, continues to oppose ganja use for medicinal purposes. On May 14 this year, the US Supreme Court decided overwhelmingly against the use of marijuana for any purpose, including medicine.
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The Rastafarians' use of marijuana is perhaps the most dominant force in the movement's religious idealogy, as well as the most controversial. Its use grounded in the Bible, ganja, also known as the "holy herb", took on the role of a religious sacrament for the Rastas as the movement gathered speed in the 1930's, and symbolized a protest of the oppressive White Babylon, or power structure, which had deemed its use illegal. The term ganga refers to a specially cultivated type of Indian hemp derived from female plants, as opposed to the Mexican-Spanish variety, marijuana. The flowering clusters from the tops of the plants are carefully cut off, producing a resin with special properties capable of producing altered states of consciousness when used in smoking mixtures (Barrett 128). Ganja, then, represents a finer quality of weed, and is said to be as much as four times stronger than the Mexican-Spanish variety.
While its use is largely associated with Rastafarians, ganga use among Jamaicans was by no means unique to the Rastafarian movement. Prior to their emergence in the 1930's, ganga was used by native herbalists as a folk medicine, particularly in teas and as smoking mixtures with tobacco. Although its use had been prohibited very early in Jamaica, most peasants had no knowledge of its illegality. With the emergence of the Rastas, however, the smoking of the herb came to take on new significance.
Ganja is though to have become a religious ritual of the Rastafarians during the era of the Pinnacle Commune in the early 1940's. The Commune was founded by Leonard Howell a leading figure of the Rastafarian movement. This was after Marcus Garvey's departure from Jamaica in 1917. Having started a ministry in the slums of Kingston, Howell developed an immediate following and began to publicly advocate six principles, which soon led to his arrest: 1) hatred for the White race; 2) the superiority of the Black race; 3) revenge on Whites for their wickedness; 4) the negation, persecution, and humiliation of the government and legal bodies of Jamaica; 5) preparation to return to Africa; 6) acknowledgment of Emperor Haile Selassie I as the supreme being and the only ruler of the Black people. Charged with uttering seditious speech in which he abused both the Government of Great Britain and the Island, Howell was sentenced to two years imprisonment. It was upon his release that he organized the "Ethiopian Salvation Society," recruited a large following, and by 1940 had established a cult commune by the name of Pinnacle, deep in the hills of St. Catherine overlooking the city of Kingston . It's remote location served its purpose, at least temporarily, in keeping the authorities away.
It was during this time at the Pinnacle Commune that ganja is believed to have been adopted as a religious ritual by the Rastafarians. Grown in abundance as a native cash crop, the isolation of the Rastafarian commune led to a freedom to indulge in the drug that was "virtually unimpeded" . Pinnacle, then, became a bridge burning act, the solidifying movement around certain rites and practices with which they are now identified.
In 1941, however, the Pinnacle Commune was broken up by the police, and the majority of the Pinnacle dwellers moved to Kingston. Unlike the earlier peasants who had used the ganja, these urban dwellers knew of the illegality of the herb. It would therefore be right to assume that as a protest against society, ganga smoking was the first instrument of protest engaged in the movement to show its freedom from the laws of the "Babylon".
For the Rastafarians, however, whose beliefs are not only a religion, but a way of life, the smoking of the herb symbolizes much more than an attempt by the movement to "show its freedom from the laws of the 'Babylon'." Rather, it is an intensely religious experience, the key to a new understanding of the self, the universe, and God. According to a leading Rastafarian: Man basically is God but this insight can only come to man with the use of the herb. When you use the herb, you experience yourself as God. With the use of the herb, you can exist in this dismal state of reality that now exists in Jamaica. You cannot change man, but you can change yourself by the use of the herb. When you are God you deal or relate to people like a God. In this way you let your light shine, and when each of use lets his light shine, we are creating a God-like culture and this is the cosmic unity that we try to achieve in the Rastafarian community.
According to the Rastafarians, the average Jamaican is so brainwashed by colonialism that his entire system is programmed in the wrong way. His response to the world is conditioned by unseen forces due to European acculturation, and can only be "loosened up" through the use of the herb. The use of the herb results in a true revelation of Black consciousness which brings about the proper love for the Black race. One's true identity can finally be experienced, along with the revelation that Haile Selassie is God and that Ethiopia is the home of the Black people.
For the Rastafarians, then, the smoking of the herb is both a reactionary device to society, freeing the follower from the establishment, and a religious sacrament, enabling the Rastafarian a oneness with both God and himself. Today, however, as he or she recites the prayer preceding the lighting of the herb: Glory be to the Father and to the maker of creation As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be World without end: Jah Rastafari: Eternal God Selassie I.
The Rastafarian movement is threatened by the emergence of crack as the drug of choice among Rastafarian youth, on Kingston's streets and elsewhere in Jamaica. If nothing else, this moral decline over which the older generations of Rastas are so disturbed illustrates precisely how they themselves view the use of the herb, a religious sacrament, in comparison with other illegal drugs.
PAGE 12-13: "The herb "ganja" (marijuana) was regarded as "wisdomweed," and the Rasta leaders urged it to be smoked as a religious rite, alleging that it was found growing on the grave of King Solomon and citing biblical passages, such as Psamls 104:14, to attest to its sacramental properties: of man, that he may bring forth food out of the earth."
PAGE 216: "He'd (Bob Marley) been a moderate smoker since his early teens; mostly spliffs, the chillum only sporadically--that was more of a Rasta apparatus. Smoking ganja was as commonplace among the youth in the ghetto as steering a soccer ball..."
Article from Excite.com
KINGSTON, Jamaica (Reuters) - The movement to legalize Jamaica's favorite herb may be hitting a new high.
A majority of people who have appeared before a Jamaican national commission on marijuana favor decriminalizing the potent plant known locally as ganja, a commission official said in an interim report to Prime Minister P.J. Patterson.
Although officially outlawed on the Caribbean island of 2.6 million people, marijuana is used often and in public. Reggae icon Bob Marley legitimized it in the 1970s and followers of Rastafari, the religious sect that sees the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie as a god, consider it a sacrament.
Barry Chevannes, a University of the West Indies professor who chaired commission meetings in 11 communities, said an overwhelming majority of the 153 people who had testified want marijuana decriminalized.
"Although there were some who wanted to maintain the status quo regarding the criminal status of ganja in Jamaica, it may be deduced so far that most persons and organizations would support the decriminalization of the use of ganja for private purposes and in private spaces," Chevannes said.
Among those who had testified before the commission were representatives of the Medical Association of Jamaica, the Scientific Research Council, the Jamaica Manufacturers Association, the Rastafarian Centralization Organization and the National Democratic Movement, Jamaica's third political party.
