Barbados: Rastafari Leader Presses for Legal Home Grow After Raid

On 2 September 2026, the Rastafari answer to the St John cannabis eradication arrived, and it was a request to rewrite the cultivation law. Ras Simba Akoma, president of the African Heritage Foundation, told Barbados Today that police clearing roughly 6,000 plants valued at $1.4 million took income out of the poorest parishes in Barbados rather than out of an organised trade.

What was said

“It is not a new development,” Akoma said of the operation. “The police have been making these sorts of raids for as long as prohibition has existed.” He described the plants as household earnings: “For years, ganja has been part and parcel of the economic stronghold, not only of the Rastafari community, but of disenfranchised, poor people.”

His ask carries a number. “Every Barbadian should have access to at least seven to nine female plants,” he said, meaning personal cultivation rights for adults in place of the permit system now on the books. No such allowance exists. Possession of up to 14 grams draws a $200 fine under the Drug Abuse (Prevention and Control) (Amendment) Act 2021, and growing without a licence from the Barbados Medicinal Cannabis Licensing Authority is a criminal offence at any scale.

His second argument is about who the licensed market was built for. “The regulated industry was not set for the average grower. The industry is set for a limited amount to grow,” he said. That system runs under the Medicinal Cannabis Industry Act, 2019, which was written around cultivation, processing, and export rather than a domestic retail counter. Akoma also questioned what fills local demand instead: “Right now, what we have is an influx of North American herb, which the Rastafari community has queries about regarding health.” He said a young man in his community was “held and charged $50 000 for cultivation” about a month ago, spent a month on remand, and has 18 months to pay. Barbados Today carries no police or government response.

Akoma is the claimant whose constitutional challenge to the Sacramental Cannabis Act the High Court dismissed on 4 July, and for whom Justice Michelle Weekes published written reasons on 31 July. She wrote then that widening the sacramental carve-out “lies with Parliament.” This is that argument moved out of the courtroom.

What This Means

For travelers, the week changed nothing on the ground. Barbados still has no dispensary, no herb house, and no lawful counter where a visitor can buy, and 14 grams still separates a $200 ticket from a court date. What Akoma is describing is the supply that fills that gap, which is why anything offered near a beach bar or outside the Bridgetown cruise berth traces back to fields like the ones cleared in St John.

The politics are the part worth following. Barbados licensed an industry for permit holders and left cultivation criminal for everyone else, and the community that pushed hardest for reform is now saying in public that the trade-off failed them. That gap between a licensed export sector and an unlicensed domestic one is where the next round of reform pressure sits.

What to watch

Whether the Attorney General or the BMCLA answers the seven-to-nine-plant proposal, and whether the sacramental appeal is filed. Akoma said in July that he intended to appeal within the 28-day window and was seeking help from the Legal Aid Department. No filing has been reported. Watch also whether the continuing St John investigation produces charges, which would give the African Heritage Foundation a named case to argue rather than a plant count.