The Urban Dictionary defines “ganjanomics” as the economic study of the arcane market for the demand and supply of marijuana. I would like to take this definition a bit further and define “ganjanomics” as the quantitative and qualitative study of the economics potential of the herb genus cannabis. At a parliamentary sitting in May 2018, Independent Senator and former Senior Lecturer in Economics at UWI St. Augustine, Dr. Daneshwar Mahabir made a case for the decriminalization of marijuana in Trinidad and Tobago and stated that the government should allow patients to use of medicinal marijuana as a means of earning revenue in the drive to help to diversify the economy. Dr. Mahabir went on to point to the fact that five Canadian firms involved in the medicinal marijuana had a market capitalization of Can $15 billion or TT$80 billions. More significantly he noted that these firms got there “seed” capital from the Caribbean but if they were conducting their operations here they would be “cutting a jail”.

By: Dr. Balraj Kistow, Lecturer and Programme Director, Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business, The University of the West Indies.