Dear Editor,
As a longtime property owner in the Cayman Islands, I read with concern your 19 Feb. report that the Law Reform Commission is moving toward public consultation on both cannabis decriminalisation and the establishment of a national lottery. While I respect that Cayman voters approved these measures in the April 2025 referenda, a majority vote does not make a policy wise, and the evidence from other jurisdictions gives serious reason for pause before implementation proceeds.
On cannabis decriminalisation, the Caribbean experience is instructive. Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados have all travelled this road before Cayman. A consistent finding across these jurisdictions is that decriminalisation without a regulated legal supply chain – which is all that is being proposed here – leaves consumers purchasing cannabis through illegal channels while removing the only deterrent that existed. CARICOM’s own 2018 Regional Commission on Marijuana specifically flagged concerns about mental health effects on adolescents and the difficulty small island governments face in building adequate regulatory frameworks. For the Cayman Islands, whose economic model depends entirely on financial services and high-end tourism, there is an additional and underappreciated risk: the reputational and correspondent banking complications that even decriminalisation – not full legalisation – can create with US financial partners.
On the national lottery, the research is even more sobering. Economists broadly characterise lotteries as a regressive form of taxation, extracting a disproportionate share of income from lower-earning households while delivering little in return. A major peer-reviewed study found that nearly one-third of people who played only lottery products – not casinos or sports betting – still qualified as at-risk gamblers. The World Health Organisation has documented that gambling disorders carry a suicide risk fifteen times higher than the general population. In a small, closely connected community like Cayman, even a modest number of problem gamblers creates outsized harm that ripples through families and social networks in ways that a larger jurisdiction might absorb more easily.
I do not question the integrity of the Law Reform Commission’s process, and Premier Ebanks is right that evidence, expert analysis, and public input should guide these decisions. But the evidence from elsewhere is not encouraging. The harms that accompany both measures fall hardest on the people least able to bear them – working Caymanians and the expat workforce who make this island function – while the economic benefits flow primarily to government coffers and outside operators.
Cayman has built something genuinely rare: a stable, prosperous, law-abiding society with a global financial reputation that took decades to earn. I would encourage the Commission, the Premier, and Parliament to weigh carefully whether the revenue and social liberalisation these measures promise is worth the institutional and human costs that other jurisdictions have already paid.
Russell Turner
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I fully agree with Mr. Turner. Decriminalizing drug use and introducing a lottery threatens the moral foundation and Christian values our society was built upon.
Lotteries act as a predatory tax on the vulnerable, offering false hope to families going through hard times rather than providing true stability.
We must protect Cayman’s hard-earned reputation and safe community, rather than repeating the mistakes that have already failed the rest of the Caribbean, Canada, and Western Europe.
Cayman doesn’t have enough on it’s plate to now cope with decriminalizing pot?Spend time on reducing crime, alcoholism, beaches are desperate to be cleaned, influx of Cubans, animal abuse and neglect, unemployment, driving speeds is treacherous on these roads. Need I go on. Please don’t take this issue on until such time as you’ve solved the other problems mentioned above.