The St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines (SVG) Med­i­c­i­nal Cannabis Au­thor­i­ty will host its in­au­gur­al “Cannab­liss Fes­ti­val” in No­vem­ber.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the SVG Med­ical Cannabis Au­thor­i­ty, Dr. Jer­rol Thomp­son, said he was ex­cit­ed about the No­vem­ber 1-3 fes­ti­val which will in­clude the Rasta­fari com­mu­ni­ty and an ed­u­ca­tion­al process that will help to re­form peo­ple’s think­ing about med­i­c­i­nal cannabis.

Thomp­son de­scribed the fes­ti­val as “a se­ri­ous ed­u­ca­tion­al event that will high­light the many ben­e­fits of med­i­c­i­nal cannabis.”

He said there will al­so be a high-lev­el lec­ture se­ries bring­ing to­geth­er the best ex­perts lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to talk about mar­i­jua­na and to cor­rect the mis­in­for­ma­tion that sur­rounds the plant.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Camil­lo Gon­salves said that now the stig­ma re­lat­ed to mar­i­jua­na has been re­moved, peo­ple can ap­pre­ci­ate mar­i­jua­na med­i­c­i­nal­ly and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, adding that this is a very im­por­tant part of what they would be do­ing at the fes­ti­val.

He added that the fes­ti­val will cel­e­brate the im­pact of mar­i­jua­na on cul­ture and the in­dis­pens­able role of the tra­di­tion­al cul­ti­va­tor in de­vel­op­ing the coun­try in­to a world-lead­ing pro­duc­er of mar­i­jua­na.

Gon­salves said the fes­ti­val will al­so ad­ver­tise the ex­cel­lence that St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines have achieved in its pro­duc­tion, cul­ti­va­tion, dis­sem­i­na­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion in the em­brace of cannabis as a plant and as a prod­uct.

Mean­while, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter, Saboto Cae­sar, wel­comed the Cannab­liss Fes­ti­val and spoke of the con­tri­bu­tion of tra­di­tion­al cannabis cul­ti­va­tors to food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty here.

Cae­sar al­so recog­nised the work of Pro­fes­sor David Berry and Dr Rose-Marie Belle An­toine in en­sur­ing that the ju­rispru­den­tial path was es­tab­lished and praised the work of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves in en­sur­ing that the coun­try has “the best bun­dles of laws any­where in the world” as it re­lates to med­i­c­i­nal cannabis.

Cae­sar said the gov­ern­ment has EC$250,000 (One EC dol­lar=US$0.37 cents) to pro­vide di­rect pro­duc­tion sup­port to tra­di­tion­al cul­ti­va­tors and pro­duc­ers of cannabis who were af­fect­ed by Hur­ri­cane Beryl.

He said the gov­ern­ment is on a quest to take the med­i­c­i­nal cannabis in­dus­try here to mod­ern lev­els, adding that it is of ut­most im­por­tance that they place the need for re­search and de­vel­op­ment at the cen­tre of the in­dus­try.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vin­cent, Sept 12, CMC

CMC/kc/ir/2024