Jamaica: Minister Cools Talk of a Ganja Amnesty for Unlicensed Farmers

As of 25 July 2026, Jamaica’s Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce has stopped short of backing an amnesty for ganja farmers still growing outside the licensed system. Senator Aubyn Hill made the remarks at a Westmoreland Chamber of Commerce and Industry meeting at the Hotel Commingle in Savanna-la-Mar, reported by the Jamaica Observer.

The request came from Verald Vassell, better known as Ras Iyah V, a Cannabis Licensing Authority board member and chairman of the Westmoreland Hemp and Ganja Growers Association. “As the minister in charge of the CLA, what are the plans? Because I know the regulation has been amended recently,” he asked. He said most traditional growers “have been out-financed,” and that police harassment of farmers has continued through a decade of reform.

Hill answered by pointing outside Jamaica. “Ganja is a Schedule 1 drug. It’s the same thing as fentanyl, the same thing as cocaine,” he said, warning that “if you fly in the airspace of the United States, you are illegal.” He credited the Ministry with already lowering the entry bar for small growers, including cutting the perimeter fence requirement to five feet. On oversupply he was blunt: “The glut that is developing is because when ganja was decriminalised, the euphoria that came around it encouraged people to go into it.”

No amnesty was announced, and no timeline for deciding one was given.

This is the second supply-side objection to land on the licensing push this month. Hundreds of growers signed up at an Orange Hill registration drive in Westmoreland in June, and the CLA’s Special Cannabis Permit Road Tour opened in St Elizabeth earlier in July. Registration is moving. Regularisation is the part still under argument.

What This Means

For travelers, nothing changes at the counter. Jamaica still runs on the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2015. Possession of 2 ounces (56 grams) or less is a ticketable petty offence with no arrest and no criminal record, and licensed herb houses still issue a temporary medical authorisation for around US$10 that covers legal purchase for the length of your stay. If you are flying into Montego Bay or driving out to Negril this month, plan for the same rules you would have planned for in June.

Where the argument does land is on supply. What a licensed herb house sells you comes from licensed cultivators, and the growers Ras Iyah V represents are the ones producing most of what gets offered informally on beaches and roadsides. Every farmer who stays outside the system stays an enforcement matter rather than a supplier, which keeps the unlicensed market that catches out tourists exactly where it is. Hill’s framing puts the constraint on Jamaica’s trade and travel exposure abroad, not on the CLA’s willingness to issue permits.

What to Watch

The amended regulations Ras Iyah V referenced are already in force, and the CLA road tour continues through the growing parishes. Two things are worth tracking: whether the Ministry follows the caution with a concrete position on amnesty, and whether registration numbers out of Westmoreland and St Elizabeth convert into issued permits. The gap between farmers registered and farmers licensed is the figure that will show whether this round of reform reached the people it was written for.