The Nassau Guardian reports
Attorney General Ryan Pinder said at the University of The Bahamas’ Legal Week 2025 that by the end of the second quarter of 2025, the government will start accepting license applications for cannabis operators.
Pinder also discussed a wide range of legislative reforms, focusing on anti-corruption measures, crime prevention, and the Cannabis Act. The act, passed last year, regulates cannabis for medicinal, religious, and scientific use, establishing a licensing regime for cultivation, retail, and research. The act also allows for religious use by Rastafarians. Implementation is ongoing, with the Cannabis Authority expected to start accepting license applications by mid-2025.
“The Cannabis Authority’s board has been constituted, and is working to put in place the necessary controls, technology and processes to be able to issue and regulate licenses. That’s a big job as well. The law is big. Actually, putting it in place and administering it is very difficult. We are drafting the initial guidelines for the requirement of licenses,” said Pinder.
“In fact, I’ve received the first set of guidelines for my review, which we will pass on to the authority, and we hope to be in a position… by the end of Q2 of this year to be able to start accepting applications for licenses. I don’t find that unreasonable.
“We’re not the first jurisdiction to do this. In fact, I’ve already received expert advice on some of the technology and the actual portals that are being utilized in other jurisdictions, which I will share with the Cannabis Authority for them to review,” said Pinder.
He continued: “If you are a legal entity, you have to be 100 percent Bahamian owned. If you’re applying for a cultivation, retail transport or a religious use license, the entity has to be 100 percent Bahamian owned. We allow more ownership flexibility in analytical testing, manufacturing and research. We have a minimum a floor of 30 percent Bahamian owned.”
There will also be special provisions for the use of cannabis for religious purposes to placate the Rastafarian community. “The Cannabis Act also ensures that the use of cannabis as a sacrament by parishioners of the Rastafarian faith, when handled under religious use license, would be lawful.
Pinder continued: “This part of the Cannabis Act was benchmarked against approaches that happen in Jamaica and in Barbados, benchmarked against some of our regional counterparts, because we view that we share similar cultural and religious backgrounds and legal systems as these two countries.
“Some may regard this as controversial. Certainly, in our consultations, we had representations to this effect, mostly by the Christian Council. However, if you track the legal development in the region on this issue, it certainly can be argued that this is a fundamental right for those members of the Rastafarian faith.”
