By bizn_fun 
Last year marked a decade since Jamaica decriminalised the recreational use of cannabis and legalised its production and sale for medical reasons. Several other Caribbean nations, including the twin island country Antigua and Barbuda in 2018, have since followed suit.
Smoking cannabis is emblematic of Caribbean culture, to the extent it has become a cliché. But while the region’s affection for the plant is well documented, its status as a leader in the field is less so.
Today the region is home to a plethora of legally registered cannabis farms and medicinal dispensaries, where both locals and tourists can purchase the drug if they have a valid medical authorisation card.
Yet Prof Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, an expert on the cannabis industry in the Caribbean, believes there needs to be further liberalisation.
“Decriminalisation isn’t good enough,” says Antoine, a former chair of the Caribbean Community’s Regional Commission on Marijuana. “We should just make it legal but regulated.”
Antoine is campus principal at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad, where researchers are due to start studying various potential benefits of cannabis.
Areas tipped for study range from alleviating the side effects of cancer treatment, to how the plant can boost agriculture by improving soil health. The research will take place in Antigua, where legislation is more progressive.
The work offers “a lot of potential”, she says, but adds that legalisation would make life easier.
“The Caribbean is a leader in cannabis, in terms of strains and knowledge, and it has a long tradition of this. But legalities, the ‘war on drugs’ and all that nonsense, stifled not just the industry, but research and development,” says Antoine.