GAMBLING VS GANJA

HOW LABOUR'S HYPCRISY AND COWARDICE COST US MILLIONS!

So, gambling is part of our communities' life support system, now?

 

Many people think gambling is a game. They actually call it gaming to make it sound less like a disease. But that’s exactly what it is. It’s the next best thing after smoking crack. In fact, it’s exactly like smoking crack, except your dealer has a government issued license instead of a gun. And a nice well lit place that has been visited by the health inspector instead of an abandoned house with romantic graffiti written in human excrement decorating the cracked and broken walls.

I haven’t thought about the gambling for a while. I just put it in the box with drugs: If people want to do it they will and government, rather than stopping them, will actually facilitate illegal markets, diverting what should be tax money into the pockets of a selected few. The taxes will increase, the opposition will win the election, while the hypocrisy continues to create jobs in law enforcement, health and social safety nets unabated. The intellectuals will write books, the media will reap advertising revenues, the judiciary will get promoted for their co-operation, the cops will become increasingly paramilitant Dale Elliot will do a documentary and everyone will be happy. Except of course for the people in jail, their families, their victims, the victims’ families and the cops and nurses who have to deal with the consequences of this unnecessary bullshit every single day of their godforsaken lives.

But…

St Lucia has developed a special case and it took LPM leader Therold Prudent to point it out to me.

But this article is not about Therold Prudent. This article is about an observation he made about  the hypocrisy of  the Labour government on the issues of gambling and ganja.

Therold Prudent, Leader, LPM

 

“First, they raged against John Compton when the issue of gaming licenses was first brought up. Then, when they got in,  they went further than he did  and let it spill out of the tourism industry into the communities  so that you have gambling parlors on every corner in communities where  they don’t even have a health center  or a school.

“Then,  when it came time to renew the license, the Roman Catholic  minister  responsible for the license conveniently has to leave the island, while the not-so-Catholic  prime minister signs the contract. So this  industry is allowed to prey on the average St Lucia who  is hoping and dreaming and praying for some good luck for the benefit of  government revenue and that’s okay.

“But when it comes to the legalization of marijuana now, they say, ‘Oh no, no, no, that is not on the cards.’ That’s hypocrisy. That’s moral hypocrisy and it’s not good economic sense.”

So damned true, I can’t believe it.

Certified genius & stiff-necked fool, Kenny Anthony.

$70m worth of joints in his domestic economy and not one in his tax audits

 

Here we have a government led by a certified genius and it couldn’t figure out that turning to ganja for  export earnings  would have been a much better deal than turning to gambling for government revenue. Prudent says his Catholic conscience can stomach tourism-related gaming  for  economic  reasons. Money from outside  St Lucia  comes to  St Lucia  and gets spent here.  A portion of that money remains here, circulating like  oxygen in the blood while  some goes  back  out to the foreign investors the way unabsorbed oxygen leaves  the lungs. I think I can stomach that,  too, for the additional reason that even the tourist  is not  engaged  in lifestyle gambling. They’re on vacation. Let them free up themselves. After all, this is St Lucia, where we are happy.

But Prudent points out that cornershop community gambling is  a whole different animal because the money spent on those  games  should  have been spent on food, school  books, mortgages. It should have been reinvested in a micro-business or saved or used to upgrade a family’s computers for the benefit of the children. That’s money that’s already in the domestic economy being diverted away from noble  causes to  be shared  between the  foreign investor  and the government. Kenny and the gaming company board might as  well just hombre us in the night and said, “Stick ‘em up.”

Meanwhile, the marijuana farmers of St Vincent and St Lucia have been working their asses off to improve the quality of weed grown in the islands so they can get better prices in their  main European, which is not to say Martiniquan) market. St Vincent’s  leadership has obviously recognized the undeniable contribution of marijuana farmers and transporters to their national economy. Their economy would be a total  wreck if  marijuana wasn’t  there to act as  a center pole when all  else is failing. Marijuana is the reason why St Vincent always  has more money than it’s accountants say it has.

Heroes of the post-banana economy

Saviours of the sinking small island states

Good job, guys.

Now, duck. La Lwa rolling hard!

 

St Lucia, different story. Especially under Labour. Malhonettes par excellence. Even though most cops now refuse  to arrest any respectful ganja smoker, marijuana has been maintained as a convenient political  scapegoat. Labour ministers have confirmed over and over that  the decriminalization and export of marijuana and hemp products are not on their agenda at all.

More telling was that  when the US continued the blacklisting of St Lucian cops under the current Labour administration, the Labour government and the cops once  again turned to  marijuana as  their  scapegoat. Even while cocaine  was pouring through the St Lucian gateway into Martinique like  lajijit, St Lucian marine police were busting fishing boats  with ganja. And even worse, both the commissioner and the government used it as an excuse to boast that St Lucia was the most pro-active country in the sub-region when it came to drug interdiction. People on the corner where I watch the news were like, “Yo, what happened to the news? Take out that Christopher Hunte comedy maji and put back the news,  man.” They thought it as a joke.

Commissioner of Police

Ganja Persecutor

and amateur comedian

Vernon Francois

Why? Because marijuana is one of the few things in the domestic and export economy that works, has always worked and always will work. Everybody knows that. Good bananas may rot, but good weed does not. Even shite weed gets sold and smoked while other crops feed flies, rat  and worms. Why would any government shy away from a thing that is supporting them, even under constant persecution and threat?

This is how most cops and judges feel when forced to criminalize ganja

They are really not feeling it.

 

Even while cops and judges are agreeing that they don’t want to put on skeleton costumes and chase  ganja farmers and transporters through the night anymore, the government is insisting on finding new reasons to put them in the embarrassing position of having marijuana convictions on their 21^st  century record. Imagine that. Cops and judges are tired of this nonsense  and yet the government allows this senseless, unpopular law to persist in penetrating the people up the posterior.

The government is insisting on maintaining marijuana as a scapegoat. And the opposition…man, what a waste of time talking about those losers. They don’t know which way is up much less which way is forward. Their leader doesn’t know his ass from his  elbow. (He  was recently reportedly found with his elbow in a toilet bowl/Can’t you realistically imagine Chastanet with his elbow in a toilet bowl?)

Ganja continues to give and ganja continues to suffer for it. But ganja doesn’t have a choice. For without ganja, many will suffer far worse than what the police and the prisons have to offer.

If every ganja farmer and transporter had to cease and desist, the St Lucian economy would  suffer a case of asthma. Ganja helps keeps the lungs of a weak,  anemic, life-support dependent society relaxed  and open. Ganja helps to dull the pain of many endemic economic cancers that plague the islands.

Given the pathetic state of  the  banana industry, it is safe to say, unequivocally that ganja is already the biggest cash crop in St Vincent and St Lucia and has been for more  than a decade.

Hey Kenny, you're sleeping and the world is waking up.