With a steady track record of innovation under its belt, the St Kitts-Nevis Labour Party continues to walk the path of holistic social progress. Just yesterday, the Party made known its stance on the decriminalisation and legalisation of the marijuana plant.
At the Party’s press conference yesterday(May 3rd), Party Chair and parliamentarian, Hon. Marcella Liburd first recognised the National Marijuana Commission for the work it has been doing by hosting town hall meetings throughout the communities in an effort to source public opinion on the issue.
“Based on a visit to St Kitts and Nevis by the CARICOM Commission, we here [Labour administration] set up a local commission…to carry out consultations throughout St Kitts and Nevis and to report on their findings to the Cabinet of the government. The Commission started out on its mission and held several consultations with all sorts of persons from all walks of life and that mission is still not complete.”
Referencing the highly publicised caustic statements recently made by Prime Minister Dr Timothy Harris last Friday, Hon. Liburd stated that it was utterly reprehensible for him to wilfully thwart and essentially nullify the Commission’s work by speaking into being an anti-marijuana policy of his own on the matter.
“You could understand, therefore, the shock of the Commission and the people of St Kitts and Nevis when they heard how the Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis, Dr Timothy Harris, hijacked the work of the Commission…and laid down his own policy….in a one-sided rant which he made last Friday. There was nothing level-headed at all about it and it was extremely one-sided….He doesn’t wait for the Commission to complete its job – he just hijacks it and makes a pronouncement that ‘no decriminalisation, no legalisation, nothing going on with this marijuana here in St Kitts and Nevis, so I don’t know why you Commission people bothering to waste your time and the money of the people of St Kitts and Nevis’.
“It was very disrespectful to the CARICOM Commission who came here to set up the Commission; to the local Commission, and to all groups who genuinely thought that their views would be heard when the Commission held their consultations including Rastafarians and all the other young people and groups who turned to these meetings to give their views.”
Hon. Liburd furthered to question the logic behind the Prime Minister’s course of action. “Why not wait on the Commission’s report?” she inquired, continuing to state that “When the report is presented to Cabinet, you don’t have to agree, you don’t have to accept it but at least have the common decency to wait on the report and not jump in and abort the work of the [Commission] without even a word to them. It’s extremely disrespectful!”
Rising above the Dr Harris’ wanton ignorance, Hon. Liburd made an announcement on behalf of the St Kitts-Nevis Labour Party:
“.…We believe that the time has come to decriminalise marijuana. We can have a discussion on the details of that, what that entails, but the time has come.”
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