Jamaica raises the penalties for growing and dealing ganja

In 1961, the year before independence, Jamaica raised the penalties for growing and dealing ganja to up to five years of compulsory imprisonment. The trigger was not new evidence about the drug but an armed rising by a religious group whose members smoked it.

From Calver to calm

Ganja had been a steady concern of the Jamaican police since the Second World War. In his report for 1949–50 the Commissioner of Police, T. Calver, claimed an affinity between ganja smoking and the rise and fall of crime, citing a gang rape by youths said to have been smoking. His years saw intense police and newspaper campaigns, with cash rewards for informers, though the public gave little help. After he left in 1953 the subject faded. Bauxite mining brought a minor boom in the late 1950s, reported crime fell to its lowest level of the century, and the Dangerous Drugs Law stayed unchanged.

The Henry rising

That calm ended in 1960. A religious group led by Claudius Henry, which used ganja and had the support of a few North Americans, rose in insurrection, and several British soldiers were killed. Large police operations broke up the group and Henry was convicted of treason. The press and much of the public blamed ganja for the disorder, and at the end of the year Norman Manley’s People’s National Party government brought an amendment to the Dangerous Drugs Law.

The debate

The Minister of Home Affairs told the House that ganja was grown very widely, that he suspected a large export trade, and that police believed 50 to 75 per cent of violent crimes were the direct result of ganja smoking. Pressed for evidence by the Jamaica Labour Party opposition, he said he was not there to argue scientific data, but that marijuana was considered a pernicious element in the United States and by the British government. Ministers spoke of international pressure and of the risk to foreign relations if exports continued.

Offence	Penalty after 1961
Growing, selling or dealing	Trial on indictment; compulsory prison of up to five years, and an unlimited fine
Possession, first conviction	Unchanged: compulsory prison of up to one year, and a fine of up to £100
Smoking	Unchanged: up to one year or a fine of up to £100, or both

The opposition accepted the need for deterrence. Its only heated objections were that ganja could be planted on people and that police might use false allegations as a pretext for searches.

A pattern

Rubin and Comitas point out that both the 1941 and the 1961 amendments came at moments of economic or political unrest, when the authorities feared militant lower-class groups such as the Rastafari and Henry’s followers. The next government went further: in 1964 it set an eighteen-month minimum for simple possession in Jamaica.^[1]