MPs approve motion to bring ganja, lottery referendum

Members of Parliament on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted in favour of a motion to move forward with a bill to trigger a public referendum into the introduction of a national lottery and the decriminalisation of the use of small amounts of ganja.

Premier Wayne Panton brought the motion to the House, saying that a referendum, which he said was expected to cost $1.1 million, was necessary so that the people of Cayman could vote to decide on each of the issues.

Now that the motion has been passed, the next step is to draft a bill that sets out the specific questions that would be put to the electorate in the referendum. The MPs would then vote on that bill, which would authorise the referendum.

Panton said the national vote on the two questions is likely to be held in the first quarter of 2023.

Decriminalising ganja

The premier clarified that there is no intention to legalise marijuana in Cayman.

Decriminalising the possession or consumption of small, as yet unspecified, amounts of ganja would mean that if someone is caught with the drug, they could still be penalised, but would not get a criminal record.

“The consequences would be something along the lines of an administrative fine, a fixed penalty, or perhaps for the first occasion or for a very small amount, it might even be just a warning from the police at that time,” he said.

He added, “It is important to point out that this is not about permitting the open possession or consumption of cannabis or public smoking or vaping of cannabis or cultivation of cannabis.”

He noted that convictions and criminal records for possessing or using marijuana have had a negative impact on the lives of many young people in Cayman, who were otherwise law-abiding citizens, often ruining their chances of employment and migration.

This type of impact was highlighted by Culture Minister Bernie Bush, who, in his submission in the debate, spoke of a man who as a teenager was convicted of using ganja. “When he was 52 and had a heart attack, he couldn’t go overseas because of something that happened when he was 19 years old,” he said.

He added, “I know bright young people who were A and B students throughout high school and can’t get to university overseas because somewhere along the way they made a simple mistake with a spliff and now can’t go off island to get a university degree.”

Panton pointed out that, unlike other countries that have done so, Cayman is bound by a United Nations convention that prevents it from legalising ganja; therefore the only option Cayman has is to decriminalise it.

National lottery

The premier also stressed that the referendum would not seek to legalise gambling in general, other than establishing a national lottery. He said the bill would seek to strengthen penalties for illegal lotteries and other gambling activities.

He acknowledged that there is clearly a demand for a lottery in Cayman, as is evident from the widespread use of numbers, or illegal lotteries, on island, which he said was “unsafe, unregulated and unchecked”.

“We are reinforcing our commitment to uphold the law by not accepting or continuing to accept illegal number operations, and giving the public the opportunity to indicate to us, as their representatives, whether they wish for us to introduce a government-controlled and operated national lottery… that has the necessary controls and that is done in a transparent way.”

In his submission on the subject of a national lottery, Deputy Premier Chris Saunders said it was time for government to “put up or shut up and deal with this beast once and for all”.

He said numbers had now become part of the fabric of the Cayman community, and that some people involved in the numbers game had become dependent on it for their income, with some making up to $10,000 a week. However, because the cash is obtained illegally, they can’t bank it or hire security, and easily become targets for robbers, but cannot report the robberies because they themselves have been committing a crime by running the numbers, he said.

He said robberies were being carried out at “all hours of the day and night”, as numbers are running several times a day, rather than twice a week as in the past.

Police have also been raising concerns about robberies and violent offences occurring on the periphery of the numbers game in Cayman. In April this year, retired prison officer Harry Elliott was shot dead during a robbery of a premises where illegal gambling had been carried out.

McLaughlin: Wording not precise enough

The motion passed with 16 votes in favour, one absentee, and one abstention.

Red Bay MP Alden McLaughlin abstained from the vote because, he said, the resolution section of the motion was “fundamentally flawed”.

He had earlier told the House that he believed the government was being “politically naive” to think it did not need to campaign on one side or the other of the referendum.

“You have got to have a side,” he said.

The last time a referendum was considered in Cayman was over the George Town cruise port, which the Progressives-led government had supported. A public petition garnered enough signatures to trigger a people-initiated referendum on the issue, though that was later dropped as the COVID-19 pandemic took precedence and McLaughlin’s government abandoned the proposed project.

He pressed the government to be more precise on the wording of the motion, which he said would ultimately influence the wording of the questions in the referendum.

“I have a little experience in that and shall I say it is fraught with endless possibilism for the government to stumble at some stage,” he said, recalling legal challenges that he, as the premier at the time, and his government faced regarding the port referendum.

“The people-initiated referendum for the cruise port issue resulted in at least two major court cases which went all the way to the Court of Appeal,” he said.

He added, “Ultimately, the Court of Appeal found the challenges were without merit but understand that any referendum bill we pass here is subject to judicial review and to scrutiny,” as he told the House that the motion was “far too imprecise”.

“Experience has taught me the importance of setting out the questions exactly and precisely to minimise challenges down the road. It is from the resolution that the attorney general and his team must formulate the referendum question,” he said.

Premier Panton, however, responded that the questions posed in the referendum had not yet been finalised and the likelihood of the motion resolution being subject to a legal challenge was slim.