“TALKING ‘BOUT, you have all some little pirates now, just come from America… fi go do wah? Get rich off I and I!” — Peter Tosh, One Love Peace Concert, Kingston, 1978

On January 1st, Chicago became the latest jurisdiction to owe a debt of gratitude to the Jamaican Rasta man. Or if you look at it from the dread’s perspective, the Windy City is yet another beneficiary of the fight that “I and I” had to endure for the healing of the nation.

Because the state of Illinois welcomed in the New Year by heeding the late great Peter Tosh’s advice to “legalise it”. The ‘it’ in question being cannabis, aka herb/weed/marry-jooanna (as my uncle calls it) or “the healing of the nation”, as the Twelve Tribes might say.

GENIUS

The US state has accepted, like many others in America, that people like to get high and has taken the opportunity to cash in by taxing every single bud that is purchased from the several registered outlets that have opened their doors since the beginning of 2020, and which are doing a spliffing trade.

You know what Yanks are like – where there’s a fast buck to be made even the president’s principles go up in smoke.

But look how long the Rasta man has been telling all nations that people like to get high. They went all the way to the Blue Mountain-top, like Martin Luther King, to declare it. And they put it on record and carried that message around the world on reggae concert tours.

It didn’t take a genius to see that people really ‘like to get high’. It’s what logicians call a tautology (true in every respect – so true in fact that it cannot be false).

Furthermore, look how long Rasta has been telling the nation about how Jah so loved the Earth that he gave us the herb for the healing of the nations.

“Farmers in Jamaica were banned from growing what people want”

In dem times Jamaica wasn’t listening.

It turned its back on the natty and treated him/her as a renegade who must be subjugated. It just couldn’t see the wood for the ganja smoke.

It was right there, right under the noses of successive Jamaican governments – PNP, JLP, Manley, Seaga, PJ… all these great men and great parties stared the gazillion-dollar (JA) cannabis gift horse in the mouth and declined to pass the kutchie ’pon the left or the right hand side.

The question is why? Why didn’t Jamaica ‘legalise it’ back in 1977 when Tosh first told them that:

“It’s good for the flu,
Good for asthma,
Good for tuberculosis,
Even numara thrombosis.”

Far from ‘legalising it’, Jamaican police took their batons and beat Tosh about the head to within an inch of his life for daring to speak truth to power.

And for being so bold as to blow his ganja smoke in their faces, in full presence of the PM and the leader of the opposition. He suffered a cracked skull as a result and probable brain damage.

“I am one of them that happens to be in the underprivileged sector, you nuh see’t?” he explained at the One Love Peace Concert.

“Hassled by police brutality. Times and times again me haffi run up and down fi wah? Fi just have a little spliff inna me pocket or have a round of herb.

“Or I go buy a draw you haffi ah tense cork your batty and all them bloodbath things there until ah come back. Because police coulda back you up, roadblock coulda down the road … You haffi talk the truth! Cause things deh ah weh me go through ah bloodbath already, seen?”

Tosh tells it like it was for the ‘sufferer’ in Jamaica. Meanwhile, the judges and doctors and lawyers (and no doubt politicians, though I confess, unlike the other professions, I never saw with my own eyes anyone in government pulling a draw) were able to smoke in peace and opulence.

It didn’t make no sense. Most Jamaicans smoked, yet farmers in Jamaica were banned from growing the weed that the people wanted.

Meanwhile, farmers in America could grow as much as they wanted of their particularly poisonous weed and sell it to Jamaicans in cigarette packets. It don’t make no sense.

So why did Jamaica refuse to legalise it? Peter Tosh always reckoned it had to do with the island’s bucky massa mentality.

At that same concert, Tosh noted: “Well right now, Jamaica have been living under this colonial imperialistic sh*tuation for a long time, seen? There are a whole lot of evil forces to fight who don’t like to see nothing progressive, so learn that! And the devil is a dangerous guy, seen? …Black people must be more aware and more conscious of them constitutional rights.”

STRAIN

Remember, this was back in 1978 when Jamaican green/ brown stuff was (I am reliably informed) the world leader in the (illicit) market. Since then, of course, the Jamaican government has been compelled to decriminalise the possession of a certain amount of marijuana for personal use.

Peter Tosh should be rolling around in his last resting place with a sense of schadenfreude, but the horse has long bolted the stables. Jamaican herb (I am reliably informed) is no longer the market leader. Indeed, the common strain on the island is now the bog-standard (I am reliably informed) ‘high grade’, which is not dissimilar to the ‘skunk’ that is the opium of the yutes over this side, the stuff that makes them all wotless.

Nobody’s smuggling that from Jamaica when they can get it from a chemical lab posing as a coffee shop in Amsterdam. And nobody needs to fly out to JA for medical marijuana when most places including the UK now accept that, like Tosh said, it’s good for treating so many ailments – including epilepsy.

In conclusion, Jamaica has only got its politicians to blame for missing the opportunity to monetise the Caribbean ‘gold’ – its equivalent of Arab oil.

This article appears in the February edition of The Voice newspaper – out now. Download your copy of the issue here.