Free The South! | Virginia is for stoners? The Bahamas is for medicinal cannabis?

- Superbowl LV Weekend | Kansas City Chiefs vs Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ Raymond James Stadium, Tampa, Florida USA. |

The growing movement to legalize cannabis has won its first real foothold in the Old South. Also fifty miles off the coast of Miami, Florida, Floridians will soon have the option to take a 2.5 hours day trip by watercraft or fifty-five minutes by airplane to one of the hottest market being watched around the world for cannabis legalization, the islands of The Bahamas.

Virginia, once a deeply conservative state where Republicans dominated elected office just a decade ago and even The Bahamas has seen more progressive politicians come to power. The latter having virtually no separation of church and state other than what's written in The Bahamas constitution, religious leaders had become emboldened to almost god-like figures the past forty years and while the economy is squeezed by globalism, this small Island nation and many others with world-class talent advocating for opportunities from the legal green gold market continues to be strangled by the beliefs of the older, uninformed and less tech savvy generational leaders with reefer madness talking points, colorism and the deliberate programming left-over by colonialism in the Caribbean.
The bill “is a forward-thinking, deliberative approach to create a regulated adult use market for cannabis, which will reform our criminal justice system and begin the long process of undoing the harms of prohibition,” Virginia Sen. Adam Ebbin (D) said on the floor, adding that the “Commonwealth’s prohibition on cannabis has clearly failed.”

In The Bahamas Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis announced on February 6^th 2021 that the government is currently completing legislation to legalize medicinal marijuana, bringing the country another step closer to marijuana reform.
The government is in the process of now completing legislation to bring to Parliament to legalize medicinal marijuana so that medical marijuana could be grown by Bahamians here –- utilized and exported – medicinal marijuana,” Dr Minnis said at an event at Abaco. This comes after Bahamas National Commission on Marijuana Co- Chair Quinn McCartney told The Tribune last week that the body hoped to submit its final report surrounding the use of marijuana to the government in the first quarter of this year.
 
This is great news for a country with a majority black population who have not been immune to the damages of the racist, ungodly and targeted ‘War on Drugs’. In The Bahamas like in AnyState USA, the economically challenged neighborhoods have felt the brunt of this disastrous war on a medicinal plant. Although this is political season it is worth mentioning that Dr. Minnis is the first sitting prime minister to publicly support some form of marijuana decriminalization, informing young Bahamians that the government was working “ aggressively” to have their records expunged for those found with small amounts of marijuana. Never-the-less, this is huge for a small tourism-dependent nation who is currently looking for new revenue-making industries to create a more stable and independent economy, since COVID-19 has brought the 'golden goose' tourism market to an unexpected screeching halt one year ago. And while the more affluent and connected remain mostly unaffected, those in economically challenged neighborhood who are again, majority black are experiencing the most challenges from lock-downs, fines and the first to be let go from their place of employment.

The question now is whether it’s too late. Is this generation too sick and poisoned by fear, discrimination, incarceration, a ‘get-a-job’ school system and rather than Majority Rule, a day celebrated in January commemorating the day the majority Black Bahamian government gaining power for the first time in 1967 from white colonialist, now in 2021 is the Majority now ruled again? By who? The Ruling Class. How? By economic power. Majority Rule day which is usually listed with the emancipation of slavery in 1836 and independence from Great Britain in 1973 as the most important events in the history of the Bahamas. Coincidentally, some of the affluent and the misguided decedents of former colonialist are now looking to abolish Majority Rule day.

There's a local saying when America sneezes, The Bahamas catches a cold, as unfortunate as it my be, after the past four years of white supremacist embolden under the Trump administration, it should have eventually been expected to those who stay woke'. But to the rich, powerful and politically connected, for the majority to be woke and broke, they are nothing but a joke, but are they really?. Irish statesman Edmund Burke is often misquoted as having said, “Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.” I am a nineties teen when hip hop was at its best in my humble opinion, I listen to songs from Street Philosophers like DMX, Lil Kim and The LOX and their smash hit Money, Power & Respect. See what they though me during my HBCU college days was the over criminalization of black and brown men is not really about race but about money, power and respect. To believe in money, power, and respect, first you get the money, then you get the muthafuckin, power, then after you get the fuckin' power muthafuckas will respect you. The song was produced by Hitmen members D-Dot and Amen-Ra and featured DMX. The song motif is consistent with German sociologist Max Weber’s Three-component theory of social stratification, which recognizes that one’s wealth, power and prestige, affects one’s independence capability or ability to act on one’s will. Keeping this in mind, sadly because of having no robust Freedom of Information Act as law of the land which sadly encourages more political corruption and back-room deals, because of colorism, and decades of colonialist ideological indoctrination ingrained in the fabric of Black Bahamianism, sadly, there seem to be no longer a Majority Rule, but the Majority is BEING ruled. Will the legalization of cannabis be the effective one dose vaccine to rid The Bahamas and the Caribbean of this almost fifty year pandemic? Only time will tell.

- A rising tide lifts all boats right? Buckminster Fuller said it best: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Peace & Love to All.