During last Friday's newscast, we told you about the Government tabled the Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Bill of 2021 at the latest House Meeting.
One of the big takeaways is that those serving stints in prison for marijuana possession could get their sentences removed.
That's what the Minister of Home Affairs and New Growth Industries said on Friday - that there were provisions in the law to apply to be released from jail and to have their records expunged.
Now, the PUP is moving towards legalizing marijuana - a move that was announced in their Plan Belize Manifesto. But how will they ensure that the small dealer on the street isn't left out? Well the PM says they will have to ensure that the legislation has strict regulations.
Hon. John Briceno, Prime Minister
"The next step to control that would be by legalizing but legalizing under strict measures to ensure that the criminals will not take over, to ensure that not only the quote unquote big players get involved but even the small people can also have an opportunity. Now we do recognize that we just cant have marijuana plants all over the country with no control and that is something that the Ministry of New Growth Industries are working very hard at as to how best we can control and yet at the same time allow the small people to have maybe for their personal consumption. So we're working on that, there's no easy answers and no easy fix but we have to make sure that one, the criminals do not control it, secondly that it's tightly regulated to ensure that young people or underaged persons do not have access to it, thirdly, if we're going to road that we can tax it and tax it heavily so that the monies can be used for health and education and creating opportunities for Belizeans. It's not easy, it's a balancing act that we have to work on but we have to ensure also that there are people that feel very strongly against marijuana and especially the churches and we respect their position but when we look at the actual science, the data, we see that alcohol is even more dangerous than marijuana but what has happened is that we have this stigma against marijuana and the best way we can control is by legalize it and put strict laws that can monitor it and restrict the use of marijuana to just the people that can legally use it."
