7. SOCIAL AND HUMAN COSTS OF PROHIBITION - IMPACTS ON FAMILY 7.1. The human costs of prohibition, in particular, incarceration, on CARICOM citizens cannot be discounted. Lost opportunities for education, health, family life and employment are significant and have long term implications. So too is the impact on the economy, especially as the data suggests that these are the region’s young, potentially productive nationals. 7.2. The incarceration of persons for marijuana related charges challenges not only the offender but in most circumstances it affects their family and community. More specifically, parental arrests have been associated with a number of risks for the children of offenders such as further separations from their parent and possibly siblings, unstable care arrangements, uncertainty about his or her future, secrecy and deception regarding the incarceration, stigma, and difficulties with visitation.177 7.3. Qualitative research found that incarceration impacts the family’s physical and mental health and viability.178 Emotional stress, familial tensions and disruptions and loss of faith in the legal system are categorized as some of the human costs.179 In addition, incarceration places marital relationships under significant pressure. 180 7.4. Where mothers are incarcerated, given the matriarchal makeup of Caribbean societies, this negative impact has been increased, introducing important gender dimensions to prohibition. These have ricocheting consequences for family life. The Commission heard from many women who spoke passionately of the acute social dislocation that incarceration brought to their families. With statistics showing an increase in female arrests for cannabis, this is a cause for concern. 7.5. The cohort of the disadvantaged and discriminated who typify the marijuana convicted is beleaguered with grave financial and human costs that negatively affect their life chances and limit their developmental opportunities. Some calculable financial costs of marijuana offenders include attorney’s fees, fines and other court costs, seized assets and lost income due to work absenteeism, or in some instances termination of employment due to incarceration, all of which are especially burdensome for offenders from disadvantaged communities181. Certainly too, it often results in a loss of the family’s primary source of income, present and future, placing additional strain on families.182 Marijuana arrests and convictions also have the potential to adversely impact the eligibility of these persons for student financial aid, child custody determination and immigration status183. 7.6. The social costs of prohibition and criminalisation also include the disincentive to productive lifestyles: “Facing high returns for investment in drug trade, the opportunity costs of legal entrepreneurship, with more limited, long run profits are disadvantaged. . . As a consequence, in many poor areas of the region, children and young people who have the dream of escaping poverty do not see education and entrepreneurship as a major avenue in their upward mobility career, (those elements being the main catalysts for endogenous development of Caribbean societies), but as a mere loss of a time that would be more profitably spent in drug business in the short run.”184 7.7. The pertinent question is whether CARICOM can continue along this counterproductive path when other strategies have proven to be more beneficial both to individuals and societies. Anti-prohibitionists contend that cannabis legislative amendments would assist disadvantaged communities by reducing the
Seymour and Wright (2000) DeHart et al (2017) 179 Beckett and Herbet (2011) 180 Deldado (2011) 181 Evans (2013) 182 Codd (2008) 183 ACLU (2013) 184 Michael Platzer,’ Illicit Drug Markets in the Caribbean,’ in Day et al, para 82 177 178
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