Wayne Armond remembers the dark days in Jamaica when persons who smoked marijuana were either prosecuted or marginalized. Things have changed for the better since 2015, thanks to groundbreaking legislation in his country.<\/p>\n
On \u2018Kush\u2019<\/em><\/strong>, his latest song, Armond welcomes the global acceptance of marijuana, or ganja as it is known in Jamaica. It is produced by My MM Productions.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a celebratory message. After advocating for years, artists like PeterTosh, Bob (Marley) and Toots (Hibbert) have all passed before seeing their dream at least come to pass in certain states in the USA and decriminalized in Jamaica,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Armond is a co-founder of Chalice, a band that had a number of hit songs during the 1980s such as \u2018Good to Be There\u2019, \u2018I\u2019m Trying\u2019<\/em><\/strong> and \u2018Revival Time\u2019<\/em><\/strong>. Now based in South Florida, he is targeting \u201cthe powers that be\u201d with \u2018Kush\u2019<\/em><\/strong> which was released in early November.<\/p>\n Persons who used ganja in Jamaica \u2014 even after the country gained independence from Great Britain in 1962 \u2014 were usually prosecuted. Artists including Bunny Wailer and Toots were jailed for possession of the weed.<\/p>\n But in 2015, legislators began drafting policies in the senate, to make the country\u2019s laws less draconian. Persons found with small amounts of ganja are now exempt from prosecution, and the country now has a booming ganja industry.<\/p>\n Fellow Jamaican Orville Marshall is principal of My MM Productions. The company has produced songs by Luciano, JC Lodge and The Greaves Brothers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wayne Armond remembers the dark days in Jamaica when persons who smoked marijuana were either prosecuted or marginalized. Things have changed for the better since 2015, thanks to groundbreaking legislation in his country. On \u2018Kush\u2019, his latest song, Armond welcomes the global acceptance of marijuana, or ganja as it is known in Jamaica. It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9800"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9833,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9800\/revisions\/9833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandbox.reggaenorthca.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}