Rastafari want more legal marijuana for freedom of worship

Columbus, Ohio – Mosiyah Tafari pounded drums and sang psalms with fellow Rastafarians in a ballroom where the smoke of incense mixed with the fragrant smell of marijuana – which his beliefs hold to be sacred.

The ceremony in Columbus, Ohio marks the 91st anniversary of the coronation of the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I, whom Rastafarians revere as their savior. The group played traditional Nyabinghi music for hours on their most important holiday.

“Cannabis brings you into contact with the spiritual aspect of life in the physical body,” said Tafari, a member of the Columbus-based Rastafarian coalition that organized the event.

“It’s important to Rastafari because we follow scriptural traditions and see that cannabis is good.”

For Rastafari, the ritual smoking of marijuana brings them closer to the divine. But many have been incarcerated for their cannabis use for decades. As public opinion and politics in the US and worldwide shift towards legalizing the drug for both medical and recreational use, Rastafarians are calling for greater relaxation to curb persecution and ensure freedom of religion.

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“In this system, they are very focused on, ‘Oh, we can make a lot of money, we can sell these medical cards, we can sell this ganja,’ but what about the people who have been persecuted? What about the people who have been jailed, detained or even killed, “said Ras Nyah, a music producer from the US Virgin Islands and a member of the Rastafarian coalition.

“We have to address these things before we get too far ahead of ourselves,” said Nyah, who attended the ceremony in a tracksuit in the Rastafarian colors of red, green and gold.

The Rastafarian belief has its roots in Jamaica in the 1930s and is growing in response to blacks’ response to oppression by white colonial rule. Faith is an amalgamation of Old Testament teachings and a desire to return to Africa. Rastafarian believers believe that marijuana use is determined in biblical passages and that the “sacred herb” induces a meditative state. Believers smoke it as a sacrament in chalice pipes or cigarettes called “spliffs”, give it to vegetarian stews and place it on the fire as a burnt offering.

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“Ganja”, as marijuana is called in Jamaica, has a long history in this country and its arrival dates back to the Rastafarian faith. In the 19th century, contracted servants from India brought the cannabis plant to the island, which gained popularity as a medicinal plant.

It began to gain wider acceptance in the 1970s when Rastafarian and Reggae cultures were popularized by music icons Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, two of the most famous exponents of the faith. Tosh’s 1976 hit, Legalize It, continues to be a rally for those pushing to make marijuana legal.

Rastafarian supporters in the US, many of them black, say they have endured both racist and religious profiling by law enforcement as a result of their ritual cannabis use.

Tosh’s youngest son, Jawara McIntosh, a singer and marijuana activist who went by the stage name Tosh1, was serving a six-month sentence for possession after police said they found over 65 pounds in his rental car when he attacked a New Jersey was jailed in 2017 and was in a coma. He died last year.

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The attack prompted his sister, Niambe McIntosh, the youngest daughter of Peter Tosh, who was a teacher in Boston at the time, to advocate criminal justice reform and launch a campaign to combat the stigma surrounding cannabis and support those who are affected by its ban.

“I realized his story needed to be shared because no family should ever … suffer these harsh consequences for a plant,” said McIntosh, who also directs the Peter Tosh Foundation, which advocates legalization.

The so-called war on drugs, declared by President Richard Nixon more than five decades ago, resulted in an increase in anti-possession laws, including tougher sentences.

For years, the negative effects of the drug war have led to calls for reforms and the abolition of mostly left-wing elected officials and advocates of social justice. Many of them say that with science-based regulation, all narcotics must be decriminalized or legalized in order to dissolve or reverse the war on drugs.

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“We originally started the Peter Tosh Foundation with the Legalize It initiative, which aimed to advance the science and spiritual benefits of cannabis,” said McIntosh, “but also recognizing that those who came through Prohibition that should be the main focus of this new booming business. ”

Concern is shared by other US-based Rastafarians as companies seek to invest in and benefit from recreational and medicinal cannabis.

“Maybe you take some of that finance, those many billions and billions and trillions of dollars, and put it back in brothers and sisters who have been imprisoned for a long time,” Tafari said.

“Invest in our communities that have been damaged … maybe let some of the Rastafari participate in these business activities.”

The shift in public opinion and politics on cannabis in recent years has led countries like Canada, Malawi and South Africa to relax laws.

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While it remains illegal at the federal level in the United States, lawmakers from Oregon to New York have passed a number of laws legalizing cannabis in a third of the US state.

A Gallup poll published last year found that 68% of Americans are in favor of legalizing marijuana – twice as much as in 2003. In mid-November of this year, South Carolina Republican MP Nancy Mace introduced a law in Congress that, if passed It would decriminalize cannabis federally – an obstacle cited in many states that have chosen not to pursue legalization alone. But it wouldn’t change local-level restrictions, which means states would continue to set their own marijuana statutes.

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In 2015 Jamaica authorities gave the green light to a regulated medicinal cannabis industry and decriminalized the possession of small amounts of weed. The country also recognized the sacramental rights of the Rastafari to their sacred plant.

“We can access a certain kind of connection with creation, and that is ultimately the sacramental gift we want to defend,” said Jahlani Niaah, lecturer in cultural and Rastafarian studies at the Jamaica University of the West Indies.

Jamaicans are now allowed up to five plants per household for personal use only. But Niaah said this did not prevent the clashes with the police.

“Rastafari have had a number of problems with herbs being confiscated and detained in police custody and continued to be used in connection with the enforcement of a sacramental right,” he said.

“There really is a slippage between the pen and the practice.”

Jamaican Attorney General Delroy Chuck said in a statement that “cases of perceived discrimination are unfortunate,” but the government continues to promote equality and legal inclusion.

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“In fact, several awareness-raising sessions have been held since the law was passed,” said Chuck. “This includes awareness-raising sessions with our law enforcement agencies.”

Other Jamaican Rastafarians are concerned they have been excluded from the burgeoning business.

“The people who went to jail, who had to run up and down from police and police helicopters, couldn’t financially afford to get involved in the medical ganja industry,” said Ras Iyah V, a Rastafarian advocate and former Member of Jamaica’s Cannabis Licensing Authority. In 1982 he was convicted, served a brief prison term, and paid a fine for cannabis possession.

When the Jamaican government launched a program in 2017 to help “traditional” ganja farmers transition into the legal industry, he hoped it could help the Rastafarian community. But today he is “very disappointed with how things are going. Most of our ganja farmers cannot take part because they have no land.”

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It can cost thousands of dollars to set up a 1 acre cannabis farm under the guidelines of Jamaican law, he said.

“The cannabis industry has now been taken out of the hands of Rastafarians and traditional ganja farmers and put into the hands of rich people,” he said. “That makes us very bitter because we don’t see any justice in it.”

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AP journalist Emily Leshner contributed to this report.

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