Jamaica sets an 18-month minimum for ganja possession

Two years after independence, Jamaica made its ganja law harsher than ever. From 1964 a first conviction for possessing ganja meant at least eighteen months in prison, with no option of a fine.

The road to 1964

Penalties had already been hardened several times, often in moments of unrest. Prison became compulsory in 1941, after the mass demonstrations of 1938 and the rise of Rastafari. In 1960 a rising by the religious group of Claudius Henry, whose members smoked ganja, left several British soldiers dead. The next year penalties for dealing rose to up to five years.

After winning the 1962 election, the Jamaica Labour Party promised early laws on rape and ganja. The government said its ganja bill followed the findings of a committee of experts set up in 1963. No one had heard of the committee before, and its members and findings were never published.

The debate

The health minister, H. W. Eldemire, told parliament that ganja caused violent psychosis in the short term and laziness in the long term, and that eight per cent of male admissions to Bellevue Hospital were directly due to it. Norman Manley, leading the opposition, asked for evidence. He noted that ganja grew in backyards across the country and was used as medicine. He also pointed out that the government’s own senior psychiatrist had testified that it might lessen rather than increase criminal intent. A penalty that hit the youngest and smallest offender like a hardened criminal, he said, belonged in fascist countries.

	Before 1964	From 1964
First possession offence	Compulsory prison, up to one year	18 months to three years, no fine option
Second possession offence	Up to two years	Three to five years
Police searches	Magistrate’s warrant	A sergeant’s authority
New offences	—	Allowing premises to be used for ganja; vehicles may be seized

Ministers answered that Manley’s “hairsplitting” would mislead illiterate parents about the danger. The law passed. By then police were also searching for fields from helicopters, a practice begun in 1963.

Undone in 1972

Rubin and Comitas found that the laws had failed: growing and smoking had increased, and the methods used had harmed the administration of justice. In 1972 the new People’s National Party government abolished mandatory sentences, citing their study, which had found no significant link between ganja and crime. Four days after the act was signed, about 200 prisoners, most of them serving ganja sentences, were pardoned.^[1]