For two months we continued our research project. We interviewed people who have been smoking ganja for fifty or more years. Their youthfulness, vigor, and wisdom were remarkable. Offences against the Dangerous Drugs Law are punished by stiff fines and long jail sentences. Although the ganja industry includes people from all levels of society, only the poor are terrorized, have their possessions seized, and are sent to the stinking hell-holes they call prisons.
Jamaican citizens live in absolute fear of the police and soldiers.
There are no major resistance or anti-prohibition movements on the island. People don't talk about ganja. It would appear as though everyone has a thorough knowledge of the many medicinal and healing properties of the plant, but few, very few, know of the many industrial and commercial products that can be produced from the leaves, stalks, and roots of the ganja plant. What is most outrageously immoral is the blindness and the indifference expressed by politicians and big business. One must wonder if profits from a police state, where government declares war on its citizens, are so huge that the resultant human tragedies are justified.