Talk:Jamaica

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Discussion for: Jamaica • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Jamaica is about cannabis in Jamaica. It covers where cannabis is grown; the arrival of ganja with indentured labourers from India and the Indian words that came with it; the ganja laws from 1913 to 1972; the Rastafari and the raids on Pinnacle; preparations and folk medicine; the National Commission on Ganja of 2001; the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act of 2015 and the licensed industry it set up; the illegal trade and its enforcement; and the specimens and seed lines known from the island. The tables of growing regions, growing areas, accessions and news fill from pages that name Jamaica as their country.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources

Rubin and Comitas, Ganja in Jamaica (1975) is cited from the printed book: chapters I to IV (pp. 1–62) and Appendices I and II (pp. 171–175). It is the main source for the colonial laws. Its accounts of the Legislative Council debate of 1913 and of the Daily Gleaner editorial of 10 June 1913 (reprinted as Appendix I) are the book's; the Council minutes and the newspaper were not seen. Its population figure for indentured migration is taken from Cumper (1954), which was not seen.
Cannabis and Culture (1975): the chapters by Lambros Comitas (pp. 119–132) and Vera Rubin (pp. 257–266) are cited from the printed volume. They report the same fieldwork of 1970–1972 as Ganja in Jamaica.
Statutes and regulations. The Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2015 (No. 5 of 2015) is cited from the scan of the assented Act served by the Parliament of Jamaica; its machine-read text is noisy and the handwritten date of assent cannot be read. The Ministry of Justice's fact sheet on the Act is also cited. The Dangerous Drugs (Cannabis Licensing) (Interim) Regulations, 2016 are cited from the Gazette scan served by the Cannabis Licensing Authority (machine-read, for the licence classes only); the amendment regulations of 2026 are cited from the Gazette text (Supplement No. 107, 6 March 2026, pp. 613 ff.). No consolidation of the Dangerous Drugs Act later than 2015 was found on the Ministry of Justice's site, whose copy predates the amendment.
United States and United Nations reports. The sources are the State Department's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report for 1999, 2014, 2015 and 2025 (Jamaica chapters); the INCB reports for 2015 (paras 141 and 358) and 2016 (paras 415 and 424); the treaty status pages of the UN Treaty Collection.
Government of Jamaica releases (the Jamaica Information Service and the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce) and news reports (The Gleaner) are cited for laws, licences, official figures and what officials said. The production and value figures for 2024 and 2025 are the Cannabis Licensing Authority's, supplied to The Gleaner.
Dunkley (2013) on Leonard Howell is cited from the publisher's page, which shows no printed page numbers. The figure of 110 convictions after the raid of 1954 is Dunkley's report of earlier writers (Lee 2003; Van Dijk 1995).
Medical research. The Canasol account comes from two Gleaner articles (2003 and 2009) reporting the developers' own statements, and from a review in the Journal of Clinical Medicine (2020). Dreher, Nugent and Hudgins (1994) is cited from its abstract only.
Specimens and germplasm. The specimens are known from their GBIF records (Missouri Botanical Garden, two; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Economic Botany Collection, one). The genebank line is known from its GRIN-Global record. The seed lines are described from the keepers' own listings, as on the accession pages. The University of Mississippi's seed inventory is known from its director's testimony at a Drug Enforcement Administration hearing in 2005 (transcript, volume 6, p. 1255).

Where the sources differ

Indentured migration from India. The Jamaica Information Service (2026) gives the first arrival as 10 May 1845 and over 36,400 migrants before the movement ended in 1912. Rubin and Comitas (1975, p. 16) give about 36,000 between 1845 and 1917, after Cumper (1954). Prince, Greenfield and Marriott (1972) give some 33,000 between 1838 and 1917. A Gleaner history feature gives over 36,000 between 1845 and 1921, with the last arrivals in 1914; a summary of the Tyson report of 1939, published by the International Labour Office, dates emigration from 1845 to 1916. The page gives the three figures from the government and the two cited studies, each with its source.
Commencement of the 2015 Act. The Ministry of Justice, the Jamaica Information Service and The Gleaner give 15 April 2015; the INCB report for 2015 (para. 358) says 1 April 2015. The Gazette notice of commencement was not seen. The page gives 15 April.
Hemp. The Act defines hemp as cannabis with a THC concentration of "no more than 1.0%"; the Ministry of Justice fact sheet says "less than 1%". The page follows the Act.
The amendment regulations. The Gazette copy is titled Regulations, 2026; the Jamaica Information Service report of April 2026 calls them Regulations, 2025.
Canasol. The Gleaner reported in 2003 that the research began in 1973 and that the product was marketable in the late 1980s; in 2009 it reported ten years of research. The review of 2020 dates sales from the early 1990s.
The raids on Pinnacle. Dunkley gives the date of the second raid (22 May 1954) but not the day of the first, in 1941. A teaching resource gives January 1941; it is not used.
The 1972 act. Rubin and Comitas give 11 August 1972 for its passage; the act's number is not given.

Not used, and why

Nahas (1985), a critique of Ganja in Jamaica in the Bulletin on Narcotics: a polemic against the study. Its historical statements (for example that the legislation of 1941 was the harshest in the world against cannabis) are its own characterisations.
The CICAD presentation of 2016 is cited only for the number of expunged records. Its summary of the Act as allowing home cultivation for "recreational" use is not the Act's wording.
Pretorius (2006) on ganja in Rastafari ritual, and a school teaching resource on Rastafari: superseded by the sources above.
Ackerman (2016), on ganja and indentured labour in the British Caribbean: a conference abstract only.
The GRIN record's origin field ("Collected – Jamaica") for G 33715: the record's own narrative calls the line a cross of two Spanish "heirlooms".
Court-case figures attributed to the minister of justice for 2014 and 2015: found only in a reprint whose original could not be traced.
The Wikipedia articles on Jamaica and on cannabis in Jamaica: tertiary sources.

Open questions

The 1913 law. Its number, title and date of enactment have not been found; Ganja in Jamaica describes it as an amendment adding cannabis to the measure ratifying the International Opium Convention.
The Dangerous Drugs Law of 1924 and the amendments of 1941, 1961 and 1964 are known here only through Ganja in Jamaica; their texts have not been read.
Flora. The treatment of Cannabis in Fawcett and Rendle's Flora of Jamaica has not been read, so whether the flora records the plant as cultivated or naturalised is open.
Words. The entries for ganja, kali, chalice and spliff in Cassidy and Le Page's Dictionary of Jamaican English have not been read.
Rastafari scholarship. Barry Chevannes's Rastafari: Roots and Ideology (1994) and his chapter on the criminalisation of ganja (2004) have not been read.
The National Commission on Ganja. Its report of 2001 has not been found online; it is known from the Office of the Prime Minister's summary of 2011 and from press reports.
Enforcement statistics. No series of ganja arrests or prosecutions before and after 2015 from the Jamaica Constabulary Force or the Planning Institute of Jamaica has been found. Whether any order authorising sacramental cultivation, or any registration of a place of Rastafarian worship, has been made under the Act is not known.
Germplasm. No Jamaican cannabis held in a public genebank from a documented field collection has been found.

Source discrepancies: herbicide

The article reports that in 1999 the State Department said Jamaica did not use herbicide on cannabis but cut it by hand. United States and cannabis eradication abroad reports the State Department's statement of 1988 that Jamaica eradicated about 60 per cent of its marijuana in 1987 "through use of manual eradication and backpack sprayers", and a US government report that Jamaica had refused to use spraying, answered in March 1985 by the Jamaican government's statement that it would not spray paraquat. Éloise 20:25, 21 October 2026 (+07)