DPP links rising violence to marijuana use

Acting Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Aliston Seale SC is firmly of the view that the rise in violent crime in Barbados is directly linked to the use of marijuana. And he has voiced strong opposition to any move to legalise the drug.

He said only one per cent of daily presentence reports returned to his office involved offenders who had never used cannabis.

Insisting that there is a link, he said on Friday: “What would make our young men just drive through a district and shoot at somebody? What would make people appear out of the dark at a netball game and fire shots and kill one of our babies? What would make them do that? What would make somebody kill somebody who they don’t even know? And sometimes when you hear what they did it for — $5 000, $3 000, some herb…. And we say that we are not a lost society and don’t try to pull it back. I maintain that most of the crime in Barbados has some drug use connection, and I have empirical evidence because I have these reports coming back to me daily.

“When it comes to these violent offences — gun use, robbery, aggravated burglary, murders —every time the report comes back, you see that person has some use of these psychotropic substances,” the island’s most senior public prosecutor said. In contrast, he noted, non-violent offences typically show no drug use.

Seale said he was against any legalisation of cannabis here, despite other countries going that route.

“Everybody smoking this thing and saying ‘it don’t affect me’ but yet they are killing one another, they are killing our children and doing all sorts of heinous things about this country and we are supposed to accept it. That is where the world is going. So if the world is going to hell in a handbasket, we are supposed to follow because the first world countries are doing these things and they legalised it?” Seale questioned.

Rejecting comparisons between cannabis and alcohol, he said the effects of marijuana were far more dangerous.

“The history of rum shows that people get drunk and fall down all over the place. Some go home and make noise but can’t beat nobody. Others go and vomit up the place. Yes, it creates problems on the road if they try to drive as they can cause fatal accidents, but the effect is nothing like the use of cannabis,” the prosecutor insisted. “We have years of experience in rum, but do not try to compare the two because the effects that I have seen of alcohol consumption — although I do not agree with it — and cannabis consumption are two totally different things!”

Seale made the comments in the No. 4 Supreme Court during sentencing submissions in the case of Trae Rico Leacock, who admitted to unlawfully killing his brother on October 22, 2021.

jeniquebelgrave@barbadostoday.bb