Grena­da's Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Lennox An­drews says be­fore the end of the sec­ond half of 2025 the Gov­ern­ment will bring leg­is­la­tion to the par­lia­ment that will de­crim­i­nalise the use of cannabis for re­li­gious and recre­ation­al use.

“We were hop­ing to have this done be­fore the end of the first quar­ter but right now I can safe­ly say that it will be done be­fore the end of the first half,” said An­drews who point­ed out that the leg­is­la­tion will be sim­i­lar to the leg­is­la­tion that the for­mer New Na­tion­al Par­ty laid in the House in 2021 but died a nat­ur­al death when the Par­lia­ment was dis­solved for the June 2022 gen­er­al elec­tion.

That Bill which was laid in the Low­er House for first read­ing by for­mer Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Pe­ter David, sought to de­crim­i­nal­ize the use of mar­i­jua­na and for any­one over the age of 18 to have no more than 28 grams in his or her pos­ses­sion for per­son­al use by amend­ing the Drug Abuse (pre­ven­tion and con­trol) Act.

The amend­ment as pro­posed back in 2021 al­lowed the use of cannabis by Rasta­far­i­ans in places of wor­ship and to al­low per­sons who have at­tained the age of 18 years to pro­duce, sup­ply, or of­fer to sup­ply a small amount of cannabis.

There were six amend­ments and one in­ser­tion and the main ob­jec­tives of the amend­ments were to al­low any­one over 18 to be in pos­ses­sion of 28 grams or 0.987671 ounces of mar­i­jua­na and to al­low each home­own­er over the age of 18 to grow no more than five trees. 

Rasta­far­i­ans will be able to use the herb sole­ly for re­li­gious pur­pos­es as a sacra­ment in ad­her­ence to the Rasta­far­i­an faith and at a place of wor­ship.

How­ev­er, dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign the then op­po­si­tion Na­tion­al De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress promised to le­gal­ize the pos­ses­sion and use of cannabis. How­ev­er, in Jan­u­ary 2023 Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell said Grena­da will fo­cus on med­i­c­i­nal mar­i­jua­na or com­mer­cial us­es of mar­i­jua­na.

“We al­so rec­og­nize as well that it’s a mis­al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources to crim­i­nal­ize a plant that has the lev­els of com­mer­cial and med­i­c­i­nal us­es that I think every­one has ac­cept­ed it has,” he said in his first me­dia in­ter­view for 2023.

He al­so ex­plained that the in­ten­tion is for a reg­u­lat­ed sys­tem where law en­force­ment is not ar­rest­ing and charg­ing peo­ple for the per­son­al use of cannabis. “We don’t want to keep on wast­ing state re­sources ar­rest­ing peo­ple for a spliff and that sought of things, you know it makes no sense and the po­lice are bet­ter off do­ing prop­er polic­ing rather than chas­ing some­one for a spliff and so on,” he said.

ST GEORGE’S, Grena­da, Feb 26, CMC –

CMC/ls/kb/2025