Marijuana commission hoping to get back on track in July

The Bahamas National Commission on Marijuana is hoping to resume work and get back on track in July, after having been “on hold” since March due to the COVID-19 outbreak, according to the commission’s co-chair, Quinn McCartney.

On January 21, the commission’s highly anticipated preliminary report on marijuana was submitted to Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis, and McCartney said at that time that the full report was expected to be submitted by the end of the first quarter of 2020 once a national survey on the matter had been undertaken.

McCartney told The Nassau Guardian yesterday, “We wanted to give him (the prime minister), as he indicated, he wanted to have a chance for himself and the Cabinet to review the preliminary report submitted by us.

“So during the month of February we were still actively preparing for our national survey that we spoke about, and so we were just getting to the stage where we were trying to formalize that and implement that in March. But, of course, March was the month of COVID, when COVID started, and so that has put everything on hold.”

The decriminalization of marijuana has been a national topic of debate for some time, and Minnis has in the past publicly expressed his support for the expungement of criminal records for simple possession of cannabis.

On Monday, during his contribution to the 2020/2021 budget debate, Minnis again spoke to his administration addressing “decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana and expunging certain records for offenders”.

With the country only just recently moving into phase five of its reopening, where restriction on movement to contain the spread of COVID-19 is gradually being relaxed, McCartney said the commission is “just at this stage waiting”.

“We will reach out to the Office of the Prime Minister just to get guidance as to how do we move forward,” he said.

“We have some recommendations as to the way forward, and so again it’s basically just us regrouping now and getting back on track as these restrictions are modified and we have a little more freedom now in terms of contacting persons and all the social distancing issues.

“So we intend, certainly, I would say safely by July, we want to try and get back on track and certainly see what else the government wishes for the marijuana commission to [do] moving forward.”

McCartney also noted that the national survey that the commission had planned to undertake may have to be done online in a COVID-19 era, if the government says it is still required. 

“One of the options that we looked at from some time ago is actually using an online process,” he said.

“And so, in this new environment now that’s probably or most likely will be the preferred way in lieu of travel restrictions, in lieu of face-to-face contact. So we would have to find a statistically acceptable or a reliable method to gather this information to help us, if this is what we still need to do moving forward.”

But McCartney said he would leave that decision “to the experts”.

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source https://thenassauguardian.com/2020/06/26/marijuana-commission-hoping-to-get-back-on-track-in-july/