Tag Archives: drugs

This is my penultimate column before I proceed on my break after twenty-four years of writing these weekly columns. As I move on to my documentary videography projects, which are not likely to be completed before September, I am intensely anxious for the future of our once materially prosperous island …

Trinidad and Tobago entered into the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, which was announced in Doral, Florida, two weeks ago at a gathering called the Shield of the Americas Summit. This coalition is a new alliance between the US and certain Latin American countries, led by the US, and intended to …

David Rudder famously sang in 1996 in The Madman’s Rant: “Somebody clean out the weed real fast. But somebody letting the cocaine pass.” Nevertheless, none of our leaderships were prepared to acknowledge this reality despite periodic reports of “drug busts”, including some massive ones. Despite strong editorials and some courageous …

Carnival is supposed to be joy. It is colour and music and rhythm and release. It is sweat on skin, feathers in motion and the collective permission to forget who we are for a moment. Carnival, we say, is culture. Carnival is freedom. Carnival is who we are. And yet, …

Last week, in light of the current United States naval presence in Caribbean waters, I posed a question about sovereignty, to which I return below. However, I must begin this week noting that the National Gas Company (NGC), a premier state enterprise, has pelted both the Minister of Education, Dr …

In 2005, Steve Jobs addressed the new graduates of Stanford University. He advised: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. You have to trust the dots will somehow connect in your future.”  It is easy to miss the connections in our rancorous society …

Former Jamaican Olympian Grace Jackson is not against the idea of legalising doping in track and field. Insisting that she is not an advocate for drug usage in the sport, she, nevertheless, floated the idea that the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) might work with the global governing bodies to achieve …

“If we were to go all the way and legalise marijuana for both medicinal and recreational purposes, think about the effects it could have on boosting and differentiating our basically still-born tourism product… The potential to revitalise the local economies of rural villages hardest hit by our recession is obvious. …

“The potential to soothe the savage beasts of the nation whenever they appear in your communities and to put disagreement into less destructive modes. That is a challenge to which you must all rise. “Meeting that challenge must be prefaced by a search for self-esteem. I say this is the …

Last week, I wrote of the ill wind of deep-seated race and class divisions. Let me acknowledge that the use of the ill wind description was one put to me in conversation with someone for whose intellect and creativity I have high admiration. I asserted that this ill wind drives …

Really, it does not bother me that the Strategic Service Agency (SSA), or any other State intelligence agency, from the AIA to the ZIA, might want to peep through my back door, monitor what I am writing now, check my email before I do, or listen in on my telephone …

Even though it is said we have become desensitised, the murder rate is once again front and centre of a very grim stage and we have been told to “brace ourselves for more murders.” This warning contains the grave implication that the authorities are not in control. It is also …