Jamaica: Growers Report Four Raids a Day as CLA Opens New Offices

As of 16 July 2026, Jamaica’s largest ganja growers’ body says police raided farms in St Elizabeth and Westmoreland as often as four times a day in the weeks before the Cannabis Licensing Authority opened its new headquarters. Maurice Ellis, head of the Ganja Growers and Producers Association of Jamaica, made the claim at the ribbon-cutting itself.

Ellis told the Jamaica Gleaner that the Jamaica Constabulary Force has conducted “as many as four raids a day in sections of St Elizabeth and Westmoreland in recent weeks,” often on allegations that farmers are running guns-for-drugs trades. “The ganja farmers today are still facing raids from the JCF for the past several weeks,” he said. “If you understand ganja farming in Jamaica, you will know that the ganja farmer is not the smuggler.” He represents roughly 3,000 licensed and unregulated growers. On the decade of reform since the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2015, his verdict was short: “The industry was built from the top down, instead of from the ground up.”

The setting is what gives the remarks their weight. The same ceremony produced the Authority’s own numbers, a permanent headquarters on Haining Road and a 200th licence issued, with State Minister Delano Seiveright describing “a modern, transparent, credible and internationally respected medicinal cannabis industry.” Ellis spoke on the same programme.

The two parishes he named are the ones the Authority has worked hardest. Its zero-fee Special Community Permit and Cultivator’s Transitional Special Permit exist to bring traditional growers inside the licensed system, the permit road tour launched in St Elizabeth on 10 July, and Westmoreland’s Orange Hill farmers began registering in June. Enforcement in the same fields is the friction Ellis is describing.

The Gleaner reported it was unable to obtain a response from the JCF. The Authority did not comment in the article. Ellis spoke more than a decade after the death of Mario Deane, whose fatal beating in police custody following an arrest for a ganja spliff pushed the 2015 reform forward.

What This Means

For visitors, none of this reaches the herb house counter. The tourist pathway runs through licensed retailers and the roughly US$10 medical authorisation, and the 2-ounce possession threshold is unchanged. If you are driving through St Elizabeth or Westmoreland, the practical read is that rural cannabis fields remain active police ground even where growers are registering. Treat a farm visit or a roadside purchase as a different risk category from a licensed herb house in Negril or Montego Bay.

For the industry, the gap Ellis names is the one the Authority’s permit programmes were built to close. The JCF put the western region’s share of national ganja seizures at 31 per cent for 2026 so far. A grower who registers and still gets raided has little reason to recommend registration to a neighbour.

What to Watch

Whether the JCF issues field guidance to officers on verifying a Special Community Permit, and whether the Authority publishes registration counts for the two permit categories. Either would show whether the road tour is converting growers faster than enforcement is pushing them back out.