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Marijuana Decriminalization: Vice or Virtue
posted (October 26, 2017)
Today, the media also asked CEO Alpuche about the decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana. Critics say the social fallout - especially among youths could be great - since it could lead to the normalized use of a gateway drug. But, others would say that many youths are already using it and ending up in jail for small amounts of weed. Alpuche says there's a government task force to analyze and reposed to the change in the law:...

Judith Alpuche, CEO - Ministry of Human Development
"How do you implement this especially with regards to under 18 and so cabinet had instructed that 4 ministries and their technical personnel meet: Health, Human Development, Education and Home Affairs, the police. We met and discuss how the implementation would work and basically we outlined the barebones of a protocol as to how these things would be managed for under 18 and that was sent to cabinet and cabinet approved those recommendations. So NDAC which comes under the Ministry of Health will be case managing. So the police will identify these young people and NDAC will be ensuring that they get the kind of counseling and services that they need."

"What is not helpful right now is for them to be incarcerated for these small amounts of marijuana, because it really does have an impact and we see that from our community rehabilitation department all these children that goes to jail or end up at the youth hostel for marijuana use and it just negatively impact their future in terms of they are kicked out of school and they are expelled. It's hard to get back into any other institutions and it's just a spiral after that in many cases. So from our perspective this is a more useful way of dealing with the issue."

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