Part 1

Ganja Monopoly - Corporate Enslavement and Food Insecurity

By Kwame Nkosi Romeo

If you think the battle is done 

My brethren, you are riding an illusion, an illusion

You talk of progress/love/and justice

peace and unity/all illusions/illusions

King Short Shirt sings illusion

Lyrics by Shelly Tobitt

What did the Antigua Labor Party (ALP) government do after realizing local people were considering investing in the lucrative Ganja (cannabis sativa, indica, and ruderalis) and Hemp (cannabis sativa L, ruderalis) industry?

Antigua and Barbuda Cannabis Act 2018 was passed in anticipation of Grow Antigua and Barbuda Limited's fail-safe licensed confirmation for retailing medicinal cannabis dispensaries. The Medical Cannabis Authority (MCA) affirmed that Itopia Life Antigua, a subsidiary of Itopia Life Jamaica, had already invested more than US$3,703,704 million to set up its Grow Antigua operation.

Furthermore, this suspicious circumstance is questionable and does not profit the public treasury or Rastafari dividends - a repeated happening from YIDA to Western Imperial Economic Zone (WIEZ) secret deals and false promises of jobs and billions in investment! (Jamaica-based company outline proposal to Antigua government- Antigua Newsroom September 23, 2019).

Later, UK-based FARMeceutica's long-awaited US$24,074,074 million (EC$65 million) investment, 200 jobs, growing and producing Hemp is not yet in sight, nor are the following.

Where are the five more ganja licensee applications totaling US$11.1 million and 200 promised jobs?

The Medical Cannabis Authority (MCA) issued the first license to Grow Antigua on June 14, 2021, to produce medical cannabis: medicinal cannabinoid extract, starting the monopoly of influence. 

After nine months and 23 days, belatedly included in this license was the confirmation of a lounge. The MCA officially handed over the permit on April 6, 2022. In addition to this, four months later, the business was operational. A knowledgeable source states that there was high-handed arm-twisting behind the mask of democracy.

Soon afterward, the Antigua Labor Party (ALP) government increased the licensing fee for subsequent applicants denying ".. rights to livelihoods .." this correlates with a sentence in prime minister Gaston Browne's most illusory speech at the 77th Session of the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2022. In summary, the right to life is under siege according to United Nations Human Rights - The Rights to Adequate Food Fact Sheet No. 34: 

"When people are not able to feed themselves and face the risk of death by starvation, malnutrition or resulting illnesses. Their right to life would also be at stake."

Browne's recitation of rights to livelihoods and life was untrustworthy since it ignored the worsening of all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the representative example from YIDA to WIEZ, which is evidence-based. 

As permitting a radius restriction of 10 miles gives the advantage to Itopia Life Antigua, the ownership composition (ILA) at 52%, the government-linked National Asset Management Company (NAMCO) at 24%, and Rastafari Food For Life (RFFL) at 24%. Grow Antigua and ILA are subsidiaries of Itopia Life Jamaica (ILJ). The MCA has not issued another license since Grow Antigua.

ALP was unfavorable to local people's complaints about the high licensing fee for cultivation and medicinal cannabis dispensary outlets. Nonetheless, obliging Grow Antigua to open on August 15, 2022, one of the three dispensaries earmarked with the undertaking: "... that government not rush to issue new license..." 

Predictably, the ALP government agreed, but that was not the same in Jamaica. Itopia Life Jamaica became the second licensed medical ganja dispensary in Kingston, Jamaica, on Wednesday, July 10, 2019. In Jamaica, the ganja economy is open, with no radiuses. Thus far, nine ganja dispensaries are operating on 22 km (8 sq miles) in the parish of Kingston, Jamaica. On the other hand, Itopa Life Antigua is the only dispensary operating on 10 km (4 sq mi) in the Parish of St John's Antigua.

Another is Kingstown St. Vincent, 52 km (20 sq mi), with four licensed medical cannabis industries and a well-thought-out progressive plan. (Jamaica-based medical cannabis outlines přoposals made to Antigua-NaionNews September 23, 2021)

Why should prohibition exist on St. John's, Antigua, 10 km (4 sq mi)? 

This prohibition contradicts The Right of Establishment- CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME): Non-discriminatory access to licenses and permits.

There is obvious bias against local people's Right to Establishment while giving that right to another CARICOM member country is corruptible: 

CARICOM Nationals can establish companies and other business enterprises in each other's territories and are equally treated as national. 

In contrast, we are foreigners in our country, starved of a decent life! The most oppressed must have first preference, such as Rastafari, not the oppressors. Secondly should be ganja-related convictions. 

The militancy of Jamaica reggae icon Peter Tosh's song Legalise It took to task ganja prohibition and convictions. That's the most committed protest song of that era, representing Tosh's positivity to equal rights and justice for the many incarcerated. Some of today's laws agree with Tosh's advocacy against social oppression.

In New York, the USA, people with Ganja-related convictions are the first to get a license, beginning the boost of small businesses and more equitable industries. But in Antigua and Barbuda, the administrators bow down to monied interest. 

Again, in Antigua and Barbuda, the brazen perpetuation of social inequality and conflict of interest grows worse. Grow Antigua gets exclusive access to plead with the ALP government concerning lowering the cannabis medicinal card subcategory fee for visitors and nationals: ".. wanting to utilize medical cannabis..."

Consequently, this crafty inclusion of nationals assures thousands of local consumers are signing up for legal purchases, generating income for ALP investors by decreasing the medicinal card application. Along with this, prime minister Gaston Browne intends to consult with Minister of Agriculture Samantha Marshall and Minister of Education Daryll Matthew, suggesting doubling the quantity from 15 grams to 30 grams. According to Browne: "..the quantity that we have decriminalized is not sufficient.."

It is difficult for Browne to be fair-minded in this instance since it is obviously in preparation for the thousands of people already signed up for medical cannabis, benefiting the only dispensary, Grow Antigua.

These politically induced injustices and economic imbalances of unequal wealth distribution create generational poverty and lack of ownership, such as the licensing fee costing US$120,370.00 left many people behind.

That is our responsibility to change, and it's not complicated. (Cabinet agrees the cost of cannabis license is "prohibitive" Daily Observer August 25, 2022)

It starts with Grow Antigua's location at Redcliffe Quay, Duty-Free, St. John's, and ALP's corrupt arrangement that prohibits any other related medicinal cannabis business within 10 miles of Grow Antigua. The community must rise against this wealth monopoly.

The ALP cabal's sudden interest in Ganja is the financial gain. MJBIZ reports that the US expects to generate US$33 billion in US legal ganja sales for 2022. Anyway, ALP gives a puff to Rastafari's submissiveness of growing and harvesting Ganja shackled to Andrew Moody-Stuart's company Grow Antigua. 

Andrew is the son of Len and Barbara Moody-Stuart and the grandson of sugar barons Alexander Moody-Stuart and Judith Henzell. This hyphenated last name came about when his great grandfather from Scotland, the Rev. Alexander Moody, married Jessie Stuart on September 9, 1839, to keep hidden the brutal legacy of the family slave trading activity supported by Ministers of religion who saw slavery as an: institution of God.

On April 25, 1846, in Paisley, Scotland, the courageous Frederick Douglass's Speech 'Send back the blood-stained money' condemned Rev. Moody-Stuart's Free St. Luke's Church connection to slavery:

"They did not utter one word of sympathy for the slave, nor a sentence of condemnation of those who held them in that condition, but they clothed them in the garb of Christianity."

Seventeen years earlier, in an 1829 speech by David Walker, 'An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, ' took exceptions to Christians who supported slavery and the subjugation of the enslaved. 

What is Christianity? No empathy for the enslaved enshrined that belief. Andrew's ancestor, Colonel Thomas Moody, benefited from the church dealings. Colonel Thomas Moody was the son of Thomas Moody and Barbara Blamire, husband of Martha Moody nee Clement, and son-in-law of enslaver Richard Clement, one of 3,000 slave-owning families, paid a total of £20m in compensation by the British government in 1833. (Ancestry.com)

 In due course, a family member, Lena Sedgwick-Henzell, wife of Leonard Isaac Henzell, purchased Long Island (renamed Jumby Bay at Long Island) Antigua, 300 acres, at a 1917 auction sale for £300, implying the money came from selling chicken and eggs. Lena subsequently handed down the property to her son Frank Henzell, who sold it to Richard Gordon in 1960—again changing ownership in 1965, 1979, and 1998. Connectedly was Hurricane Luis on September 5, 1995, with devastating winds of 140mph, giving rise to the hotel's closure for two years to 1997; shareholder disagreement led to anger and legal redress—later, Half Moon purchased Jumby Bay Resort on November 1, 1999. - (Plantations of Antigua: the Sweet Success of Sugar (Volume 2): A Biography Agnes C. Meeker)

These dirty deals continued oppressing the people of Antigua and Barbuda, beginning with British Colonialism and King Charles 1st in 1627 giving a land grant to John "Earl of Carlisle" Hay to own Long Island and the opportunity of wealth creation for favored British settlers.

In the same way, 340 years later, monies from local people paid the settlers and absentee Syndicate landowners for lands owned by the descendants of enslaved Africans! Today, we continue witnessing the giving away of that inheritance to the taskmasters, only this time, it is under a black government that's no different from King Charles I to King Charles III constitutional monarchy.

Inevitably, prime minister Gaston Browne's ALP-led government forgets about the brutality of slavery, the transatlantic voyage, drownings, murders, chains and pains, whips and deaths, and no reparation for descendants of the enslaved. 

Never mourn past slave drivers, but be on guard for the inheritors!

Is Grow Antigua an exchange of plantations?

Revolutionary leaders King Court Tackey and Jean-Jacques Dessalines respectively fought against the British (1736) and French enslavers (1791-1804), culminating in the momentous Haitian independence revolution on January 1, 1804. Naturally, Rastafari must discontinue the Moody-Stuart government nexuses by applying for a license to own their Cannabis dispensary and demand economic liberation. Before long, people must rebel against the Antigua and Barbuda government's wicked structural injustice. Lastly, Professor of History Natasha Lightfoot exclaims: "Blackness still sits in a place of poverty. That has not changed." (Author of Troubling Freedom: Antigua and the Aftermath of British Emancipation)

That's true! More treacherous is the shameless ripoff of public money involving ALP and Elite Island Resort over the next fifteen years. The masses must cancel these burdensome deals since it's an odious debt and ALP profiteering that has not changed.

Why should we bear the debt of our oppressors? 

No chains around my feet

But I'm not free 

I know I am bounded in captivity

-Concrete Jungle 1973 - Bob Marley