CLEARING THE AIR
Barbados is creating an industry for medicinal cannabis, not recreational.
This comment was made by Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Indar Weir, during an interview with media recently.
“The paperwork is still to be approved by Cabinet and once that is done we will move forward; but I need to make it abundantly clear; people talk about marijuana and cannabis and they’re not carrying the message that the Government has been carrying,” he said.
The Minister stressed that it was the Government’s aim to create an industry for medicinal cannabis. He found that persons were sending the wrong message in terms of the type of industry that Government was looking to create.
“We are doing medicinal cannabis just like Jamaica, Canada, and St Vincent and the UK and we have said clearly in our manifesto that anything to do with recreational cannabis will be determined by the people of Barbados through a referendum and that is a decision that the people of Barbados will make, not the BLP, not this current administration, but the people of Barbados.”
The Minister went on to note that they would have concluded Caribbean Week of Agriculture recently and one of the main points made during the week was a challenge that the Prime Minister of Barbados set to them, which was to aim to reduce the food import bill by 25 per cent.
Weir noted that if they are to achieve this, then they can not treat agriculture the way they would have in the past.
He expressed that they now needed to look at contemporary agriculture, where they look at green houses, temperature control facilities, empowering young people to be involved in agriculture as a career choice and engage in climate smart agriculture.
He revealed that he already began the process of speaking with people about the use of temperature control units for agriculture and farms, as well as started the process of engaging suppliers on community green houses.
At the end of the day, the Minister believed that it was important for these issues of food security to be addressed so that Barbados could in a better position to be able to supply the needs of the people. (CLF)