 Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the launch of the Cannabis Commission. We know that much has been said, much has been debated. We know that the cannabis debate cites a number of dimensions at the level of economics in terms of the sub-industries that it supports and in terms of livelihoods, at the level of health in terms of benefits and certainly in terms of the implications for reforms to be able to support a cannabis industry in St. Usher. At the regional level, it was I think about five years ago that the heads of government of CARICOM at the heads of government conference in 2014 that the heads of government had mandated a commission to interrogate the issue of possible reforms to legal regimes regulating cannabis within the community and for a while it may have seemed that St. Usher is lagging behind. We know that much has happened in other members of CARICOM. But here we are today for the launch of the Cannabis Commission and I believe many people will welcome this event today because many interest groups have been lobbying for a national agenda on cannabis that represents the interests of the diversified groups that are invested in the decriminalization of cannabis and in the development of industries from cannabis. So I think it is a good day. I think the proponents will welcome today. And I certainly thank you for being here. Today we will hear from our Honorable Minister. We will also hear from the Attorney who is chairing the commission and we will also get some perspectives on how we will move forward in terms of how we will communicate on this issue. So without further ado, let me welcome to the microphone the Honorable Bradley Felix, Minister for Commerce, Industry, Investment, Enterprise Development and Consumer Affairs to address you. Good morning members of the Cannabis Commission, the media, invited guests and our online viewers. Let me first apologize to the members on the panel sitting next to me. They did take a smell of smoke on me. It was not because I was indulging but I entered a smoke field office this morning because of the unfortunate situation we had in town. So my apologies. It is indeed a pleasure and a privilege for me to be here this morning at the launch of the St. Lucia Cannabis Commission. First, I want to start off by thanking the members of the commission for participating and for agreeing to be part of such an important dialogue and to the working groups for providing the various expertise to the commission. I know that it has been a very long and complex journey but I wish to state that the government of St. Lucia is committed, is committed to reviewing the laws on cannabis and to ensure that a balanced and holistic approach is taken. For a long time now, the cannabis industry has been subdued by regulatory restrictions all over the globe. However, the legal market is rapidly emerging as more governments legalize medical and adult use of the herb. The government of St. Lucia believe that the current legal regime is ineffective and in many cases deeply unjust. We believe that the initial classification of cannabis as a dangerous drug with no value was made without sufficient scientific research and data. In fact, scientific evidence can now prove or rather disapprove most of the popular beliefs and perceptions on cannabis. There is overwhelming empirical evidence illustrating the positive impacts of a well-regulated cannabis industry. We must therefore position ourselves to take advantage of the transformative economic benefits in the industry given the investment potential and consequential positive impact on GDP. I believe that areas which may be a cause of concern can be mitigated with proper regulation and a well-crafted public education campaign. As the minister responsible for this initiative, I want to assure the citizens of St. Lucia that we will thoroughly consider all aspects of a regulated cannabis regime including its impact on the youth, public health, criminal justice and state revenue and mitigate any potential risks associated with it. I wish you thank again, once again, the members of the commission, the working groups and all those who will be assisting us in crafting a model program for the benefits of the citizens of St. Lucia. I thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Minister. At this point, I call on Mr. Michael Gordon QC who is the chairperson of the commission to unveil what the terms of reference of the commission are. Mr. Michael Gordon, as most of you know, is well-known in legal circles in St. Lucia. I believe perhaps he might be best placed to chair this commission because he's well-situated in both the legal sphere and what we in journalistic circles call the public square. You would know that Mr. Michael Gordon QC was the managing partner of Gordon and Company from 1975 to 2003. From 2003 to 2007, he was judge of the Court of Appeal of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court. He returned to private practice in 2007. Mr. Gordon has also served as the IADB, the Inter-American Development Bank as consultant to advise on the establishment of a commercial court in St. Lucia and subsequently as a lead consultant to operationalize a commercial court as a division of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court. You also know that he is the chairperson of the voice publishing company, publishers of the oldest newspapers in the Caribbean after the Jamaica Gleaner. So please welcome with me Mr. Michael Gordon QC. Good morning to you all and thank you for coming. You know, when you hear a bio of yourself, you wonder, where have all those years gone? Cannabis has been a topic of debate for a considerable time. Many years ago, there was a gentleman called Professor Michael Bobrun who was a professor of psychiatry. He practiced his psychiatry before he went to Mona as professor as a doctor in Trinidad. My own uncle was also a psychiatrist who practiced his psychiatry in Trinidad at the same time. I was privileged to listen then, and I am talking of some 40 plus years ago, to the debate between these two gentlemen on the merits of marijuana and the dangers. Michael Bobrun was a leader in the thought of liberalizing the use of cannabis. My uncle was of more conservative mean and thought that insufficient information was available as to the effect of cannabis specifically on persons who already had psychosis. Well, much has happened in the period between then and now, and I believe that we are in a position to go forward with a regulatory environment for the use of cannabis. I use the term use with some care because you can use something for medicine, you can use something for pleasure, or you can use something for profitable, legal gain and profitable, illegal gain. Am I allowed to say the master of ceremonies or must I say the mistress of ceremonies? As our leader has said, some years ago the leaders of the Caribbean governments commissioned a report on cannabis. The leader of that commission was Professor Rosemary Bell Antoine. It is a magnificent piece of work but not light reading. Fundamentally, what Professor Antoine's commission concluded was that the use and regulation of marijuana in countries can be done to both economic advantage and social advantage. What this commission has been mandated to do by the Government of St. Lucia and specifically the Minister from whom you've just heard is to suggest to the government the regulatory environment in which cannabis can be used to the optimum, eliminating those negative aspects which might undermine the perception of its benefit. It's quite a task because, as you will all know, the pros and cons have been debated at very considerable length. We have with us Mr. De Carries and Mr. Bain. Many, many, many years ago, and I think it may be as many as 20, so I don't wish to date them, they came up with a plan for the use of cannabis hemp. Now I haven't put that correctly. Hemp is part of the cannabis family. It is useful in all sorts of ways. It has no psychotic effect but because we didn't know then what we know now, that plan was not pursued. We have lost 20 years. The time has come to move forward. The commission is mandated to supply a report to the government before the end of the year and in the absence of any horrible happening, we will do so. I would like to thank the members of the commission who have met on their own time to debate the way forward. Next week we will be starting an encirclement of the Island of St. Lucia meeting in communities to try and both give information and perhaps more importantly, receive views from people as to the way forward. It's exciting. It's possibly profitable for the government. Most importantly, the commission wishes to ensure that small farmers are the substantial beneficiaries of any change that may come about. There is little more to be said that the minister hasn't already said and I am personally quite averse to repetition. So with that, I will say thank you very much. Thank you very much Mr. Gordon. I am aware that the cannabis industry supports livelihoods in various parts of the world and I too like you. I share that excitement and interest in getting feedback from people on the ground in St. Lucia, certainly from the farming community to hear what kind of interest there is and what types of innovations people are considering in terms of the industry. So I do welcome your comments and well we hear that now we have a commission that is active and it's operating. We hear that the report is due by the end of the year and we hear that there will be extensive consultations on the ground. At this point let me ask Mr. Leslie Collimo who is the principal of the company that is providing services to the government in that regard, Mr. Leslie Collimo to tell us a little bit about that. Good morning everybody. I'd like to thank the government information service for being on the ball and quickly removing my bio after I heard the bio from the chairman. You know I would pay in comparison. So GIS, thank you. As critical as the establishment of a commission is the communication and marketing that goes in to support that. Just to give you a story, when we started the initiative and we set up the social media pages some of the comments were, yeah boy the commission is there you're going to free up the read. This is exactly what proper communication will avoid. The overall strategy is to educate everyone all demographics about the commission and its goals. Marketing and communication is emotive. It's hearts, it's minds. However, we firmly believe that you can't manage what you don't measure. So really it begins with research, insight, sentiment, understanding how people feel about this very divisive topic. People are in great support of it conversely they're persons who are adverse to it and it's important to understand these pain points and to address them and that is what marketing and communication really is there to do. The methodology that we employ is really going to be a 360 degree methodology. It's going to involve the ground game which we call it very important boots on the ground, hearing from the people, use of traditional media as well as in the 21st century and day. Information age, use of digital technology and media as well. So, just to let you know about some of the research that we've done. There was a report done in 2017, a cadres report which really got a lot of information to gauge the people's perceptions and insight and feelings towards the legalization or the criminalization of cannabis. We believe that it was important to start there. Then we initiated a survey on the November 8th again to gauge the sentiment as of now. The survey has reached 15,000 people with a response rate of 11%. And I won't tell tales out of school and I won't share any information at this point but it's very interesting to understand the sentiments that people hold towards this topic. Next week we're going to be commencing social media polls. Reason being, after the launch, we anticipate that it's going to be a lot of chatter, a lot of debate on the subject and we want to be able to capture that information. We've also been doing social listening across traditional and digital platforms. Again, there's been a lot of debate, a lot of conversation, a lot of dialogue at all levels concerning the industry and the product and the hub. So we feel that it's really, really important for us to capture that information. And again, the community consultations. Aside from using the community consultations to communicate, it's also a great way to get feedback. It's not us or the commission pontificating about cannabis and what the legal framework and the regulatory framework is going to do. We want to hear how people feel about what is coming. There's no stopping it. However, we need to understand the sentiment and address those. So again, we spoke about the technology and the channels that we're going to use. Traditional, we're going to be using television, radio, print, PR, press releases, articles. We're going to be doing media tours on the various talk shows and the news shows. Out of home, which is in marketing speak, anything that communicates outside of your home. So we're going to be seeing billboards that are going to be erected. They should be going up over the weekend. And then on the flip side, we're looking at digital, so social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp. There's a website that we'll take a brief look at. Direct messaging via email and the WhatsApp platforms. And of course, the live streaming of the event which we're doing today. Right, so there's the ground game which we call it. There's the community outreach which schedule to start next week and the week after. So I think that there should be up on your screen. This is what the poster is going to look like. There's a schedule on there. And again, the message we want to hear from you is not us just speaking to you or at you, but we want to hear from the communities. The billboards, this is what they will look like. One is the brand. And when you look at the imagery there, you will look at its abstract, but it would show the legal aspect, the public health aspect, the socioeconomic aspect, and of course our people. And then there is the secondary billboard which is really to gauge people's sentiment and we want to hear from people what are your feelings towards a regulated and equitable cannabis industry. On social media, this is just some of the content that you will see. Again, it's to communicate the objectives and the mandate of the commission. The commission is not a dispensary for the hub. It is not that. The commission is there to advise on a legal regulatory framework going forward. And it's important that we communicate that. So, access. It's very important to give people access to information. Whether it be physical touch points like the community consultations, but when you look at where we are now, we have 178, 179,000 people in St. Lucia. We have 100,000 active Facebook users. 40,000 active Instagram users. The mobile penetration is 120%. How many people have two phones? It's okay. You can say you can put a hand up. Most people have two phones and the statistic is you move away from a television. You move away from the radio. You get out of your car. You may pass a billboard. You never more than three feet away from your phone. So, therefore, it's critical to give people access to information, to dispel misinformation. So, again, we have the multi-channel aspect. We have the website. It would have been nice to have taken you through the website, but you can go on there and look at it on your own. The web address, that's what it looks like. The web address is www.slcconline.org. There's all sorts of information on there. There's access to the documentation. There's articles, press releases. And that's more or less in terms of the approach. However, it would be irresponsible for me to not let you know that there's a public service announcement which will be shared across all of these platforms. And I just want to share that with you at this point. This is the first time, aside from the commissioners who have seen it, this is the first time that it's going to be viewed. When you listen to it and you see it, when you listen to it, the voice may sound very, very familiar. I won't give it away. Maybe you might be able to know who it is. But again, without further ado, the first public service announcement for the St. Lucia Cannabis Commission. The St. Lucia Cannabis Commission was established by the government of St. Lucia to review and make recommendations on the laws and regulations relating to cannabis. The commission is chaired by Michael Gordon QC, Retired Attorney at Law, and is composed of agencies such as the Ministries of Health, Agriculture, Home Affairs, the Office of the Attorney General in West St. Lucia, the Leader of the Opposition, the Cannabis Movement, the National Youth Council, and the IONOLA Council for the Advancement of Rastafari. The commission is tasked with examining the social, health, economic, and legal issues surrounding cannabis, with a view to making recommended changes to the Drugs Prevention of Misuse Act, and to design a new regulatory framework on cannabis. Through the commission, St. Lucia will be able to offer their views and suggestions on this critical and timely cannabis dialogue. Go. That is the first public service announcement that will be launched in the public space. It is intended to inform and to dispel misinformation and to accurately position the commission. There's going to be a second PSA, which will be coming out, and that one will take a different format. It will be conversational, and really the format will be an individual who is averse to the regularization of a framework for cannabis, and a younger individual who is actually dispelling all of the misinformation surrounding cannabis and the industry. The first one is informational. The second one, which is really conversational, and that will really resonate with persons. It's driven by a lot of the insight. All of this wasn't developed out of thin air. It was actually dictated by the insight that we've collected over the last two months. In my view, I'd like to thank the commission for the opportunity to work alongside them to craft this, as I think that this is critically important to Centrusia. With that, I'd like to say thank you. So that's it, folks. Thank you so much for being here. As you heard from Mr. Colimo, there are numerous channels that will be employed in speaking with people, getting their perspectives. You know, this is the age of the citizen journalist. We have social media. The reason why it's social is because it's conversational. And so what we hope is that you will spread the word. You will invite your counterparts, your colleagues, your friends, you know, to get involved in the conversation because ultimately, you know, the voices of the people, it's critical in social planning, economic planning, when you have an opportunity to participate in the process, we really do suggest that you take up the opportunity. So at least at the end of the day, what Centrusia will advance is a very populist position on the issue and an agenda that represents broadly the perspectives of the citizens of Centrusia. So having said that, I thank you so very much for being here. Thank you.