People’s Action Movement candidate for Constituency #2, Nubian Greaux, and Rastafarian traditional cultivator and cannabis advocate Ronald “Bankie” King say the Federation cannot build a credible medicinal cannabis industry while growers remain uncertain about arrest and police enforcement. Speaking Tuesday on Hot Topics after participating in the Medicinal Cannabis Authority’s Traditional Cultivator Programme, King said the police and government must be aligned.
BANKIE: “What needs to happen now is to stop the locking up and ill-treatment of anyone who uses cannabis. Because if the police and the government are not working together, this industry will not work. The politicians are not going to grow the herb. The board doesn’t know anything about growing herb. We’re going to grow the herb.”
HOST: “When somebody sees someone like you being arrested after you’re out here speaking and educating the public on this very same issue, I would say, ‘If they arrest Bankie, what are they going to do with me? If they arrest Nubian, what are they going to do with me?’”
BANKIE: “Of course. The authorities—they all must come together. Because if they don’t stop the ill-treatment of those who use cannabis, who is going to grow it?”
Greaux warned that local cultivators could also be overtaken by experienced and better-financed foreign investors unless they receive an early advantage.
GREAUX: “One of the things that I am fearful about is that once you don’t allow your people to get a head start, those investors and experts coming in and looking at our cannabis industry—if all of us get licensed at the same time, they have years of experience.”
HOST: “And they have the financing.”
GREAUX: “They have the financing. Me and Bankie might have to go to the bank as a team. They already have the financing. We have to go through the pheno-hunting and gene-hunting process to produce something that can take us two years to say, ‘Yes, we have a gem here.’ They are coming in with that already done. They already know what to expect from it. They have all the testing done.”