The island had no law against recreational drugs. The body of laws governing Dominica was nearly the same as that which existed in England in the eighteen hundreds when the land was won from the French. The locally elected legislative council added cautiously to this as the situation dictated. This was about the same as that which occurred in the United States after 1776. English common law still forms the basis, and each former colony added that which it felt necessary as the occasion demanded.
In Dominica one could be, and was regularly, sentenced and punished for using bad language while no drug law existed to punish a participant in that cultural pastime. Little reason or excuse existed for drug laws, however, until the early seventies when the favorite crop of the Jamaican Rastas, or Rastafarians, began to show on the streets of the little capital of Roseau.
Occasionally, after that, one might be asked by a young man on the sidewalk of most any of the central streets, “You want some Ganga, Suh?”
One carnival came and went without much more than a few little known, and amusing, happenings concerning Ganga.
During this running of Mas, an American construction superintendent from St. Croix, whom I shall call Lon, was in charge of the building of a new school donated to the people of Dominica by the Canadian government. He lived in a second story apartment in the capital and a few of us stopped off to have drinks with him on Carnival Tuesday morning.
“What are you growing in those window pots, Lon?” someone asked, pointing to the concrete planters that lined the inside railing of his verandah.
“Hey, you like my tomato plants?” he grinned.
“Is that grass?”
“Sure is. No law here, so I’m going to produce my own.”
Although there was no more than curious notice taken of Lon’s effort, several months later when the school was finished and Lon was preparing to return to St. Croix he apparently could not bear to destroy the fruits of his agrarian efforts.
The next morning we returned from shopping in town, and there on the first step of the short cut to our residence above the hotel were the concrete planters, complete with the healthy, robust young pot plants.
Acting as casually as I could I instructed some of our gardeners to bring them up the steps and place them in a more secluded clump of ground orchids down the lawn from our house. There, I can report, they thrived to a healthy three to four foot height. Soon thereafter a ‘mysterious incident’ resulted in their being bare of all their leaves and, without their foliage, they expired.
Legal or not it wasn’t the sort of thing one could expect most well paying hotel guests to understand.
Some local availability and use went on in the island for about a year without the Legco’s (Legislative Council) apparent notice and no laws were passed to address what some would later call a threat to the citizens.
The very next Carnival opened the eyes of the legislators. The young adult children of quite a few of the local Gros Bougs (literally ‘Big Men’. Actually the influential people) managed to obtain enough grass to get high. They made a show of using it on the streets of the town, more or less side by side with revelers who were getting higher on the traditional tipple; booze.
One other incident, just before carnival also added to the unease of the police and some members of the community on the drug score. This was the brief visit of famous drug advocate, Timothy Leary, and his IFIF group at Clark Hall, one of the estate houses owned by American, John Archbold. Clark hall was operated as a small hotel or guesthouse. John’s manager and staff were blind-sided by the reservations made for the IFIFs. IFIF stood for the International Federation for Internal Freedom. Upon arrival they apparently promptly tripped on acid and ensconced their totally naked bodies all over the front lawn in full view of any traveler to or from the airport and the capital. The police, not sure what to do with such demeanor in a place where the travel books advised that slacks were not proper attire for women visitors, suggested that they pack up and leave immediately and, in an apparently collective stupor, the Internal Freedomists complied.
Naturally all sorts of emotions gripped the adult community. First that disgraceful group at Clark Hall caused much tongue clicking and then those young people at Carnival.
An immediate call for assistance was funneled through the United Kingdom to the United Nations where the appropriate helpful authorities Xeroxed the compilation of the most up-to-date anti-drug laws garnered from concerned societies around the world. This included the latest designer drugs and chemical compounds, as well as the more familiar old standbys.
Legco adapted the entire package. It is extremely doubtful that any member knew what any of those long chemical names were, and enforcement was a nightmare aborning. Nevertheless the new law forbade citizens to, henceforth, use any of the enumerated drugs.
A rush to grow and import the most available and easily produced, marijuana, was on.
To the surprise of only some, by summer, grass was readily available and in considerably widened use.
The police now found themselves occupied by apprehension of violators of a new law and a new and widening set of criminal acts by their countrymen and visitors, and the courts also began to feel the increased burden of the new law’s enforcement.
We had managed to learn from an early lesson, but an expatiate living up the coast a dozen miles north of the capital, did not perceive the true intensity of the police dedication to enforcement of the new drug law.
Chillingsworth, “Chill” Paris, a Canadian retiree with a local crafts business was in the early stages of his own agricultural experiment; he had two number ten cans filled with rich earth and a couple of promising, but forbidden, six inch high marijuana seedlings.
Unfortunately, in the operation of a business, disciplining of an employee, although fairly meted out by an employer such as Chill Paris, cannot be imposed on a somewhat gentle but thoroughly independent people without the possibility of some hard feelings and misunderstanding; Even, God forbid, getting even with the boss. This we assume, was the cause of the leak from an employee, recently given the sack, which caused the police to get notice of Chill Paris’ little green thumb enterprise.
An unheard of thing then occurred at Paris’ shop. An embarrassed police officer placed Mr. Paris, a foreigner, a Canadian, and an expatriate, under arrest, and confiscated the two cans with the thriving little pot plants therein as evidence. A ride down the coast road in the back of a rather down-at-the-heels Royal Dominica Police Land Rover could, with some justification, be termed an unceremonious trip to the Royal Jail.
Not sure as to the ramifications of charging such an unusual arrestee (expatriates were thought to be above this sort of thing), the officer provided Paris with a chair in front of his desk. He placed the evidence on the table in the adjacent room, came back and settled down to fill out the paperwork.
Obviously such effort must be done correctly. Pride in the bureaucratic side of police work dictates that paperwork be constructed in a manner suggesting great care, especially in this case. Paris was a man, thus far, with a good reputation who, it was well known, regularly retained the services of a powerful local attorney.
Chill also felt the strain; manifesting itself in a building headache and an unaccustomed accompanying powder dry mouth. He watched the officer, his brow deeply furrowed, study the forms in front of him. Time dragged like a corpse being pulled by one leg across the room. Several officers came to the door and looked in to verify the rumor that Chill Paris had indeed been brought in on charges.
Chill winced, considering esoteric horrors and possible ramifications of his arrest and charging.
Soon, seemingly stumped mid-way by some troubling question on the first page of the charging document the arresting officer rose to go and consult with a higher-ranking officer in another room.
Paris looked after him, as he disappeared through an adjacent doorway, wondering what was going to happen next, but as Chill dejectedly turned back, his eyes paused on seeing the two number ten cans with their incriminating contents on the table in the empty next room. He looked back again to where he had seen the officer leave the room. The officer was still out of sight. Muffled conversation could be heard; seemingly consultations on the technicalities of the charging documents.
A man of decision, Chill moved his chair back very quietly, jumped up, and went quickly to the next room. There were his two plants; the incriminating evidence. With one sweeping motion he pulled the first plant up by the roots, shook it frantically, and then instantly repeated the effective gesture on the second.
Now he had both small plants in his right hand.
Without a moment’s hesitation, and with no waste motion, he frantically worked to wet his dry mouth and immediately stuffed the plants into it like a hungry man wolfing party savories. He then quickly returned to his chair.
In a minute or two more the officer appeared at the door, returning.
In half a minute Chill Paris’ teeth had ground the little plants into swallowable grist and in another he was swallowing, rather laboriously, sandy grit and all, the evidence.
“Eh, Eh?” the officer blurted, “Mr. Paris, what you do-in there?”
Chill, still madly chewing and swallowing, and with an embarrassed grin, smiled and held his hands out to the side, palms up.
Detecting an agitated tone of voice on his junior officer a major came in through the connecting door and addressed the younger officer.
“Sergeant, James? What is happening here?”
“E jot de I-tall!” Sergeant James exploded.
There was a stunned silence for a moment as the major looked in the next room and then back, saw Chill slowly finishing his chewing, and the cans without the plants. He turned back and burst out laughing, his laughter gaining in feeling and decibels.
“Mr. Paris,” he started, and Chill Paris noted, with some relief that he was still being referred to as Mister Paris, “That’s a good one, Mahn. I guess we don’t have a case without the evidence.” Then turning to the sergeant he added, “Let the man go nah, Mahn, we don’t have a case.”
The major seemed relieved, but he did not shake hands with or address Chill in any further way, but rather, still laughing and shaking his head, returned to his office in the next room, repeating, “Garcon, Garcon!” as he went.
Although the phrase has some other connotations referring to the eating of food, “E Jot de I-tall”, is assumed to be of Jamaican origin and translated in this situation says, loosely, E (He-The man) Jot (to eat or ate) the ‘I tell’, referring to the telling (on the guilty party) which the evidence does by its presence.