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We’re as astounded as you are, and we’ve been to Jamaica! In a development that’s sure to shock the avid Bob Marley fans on this site, Jamaica is dipping their toes into decriminalizing marijuana. The only news here is that pot was ever illegal in Jamaica to begin with. Two personal Jamaican anecdotes and more news about this strange story after the jump.

Jamaica is synonymous with nice weather, reggae, violence, Rastafari, and marijuana; that’s why this news is so strange:

It’s not clear why the Jamaican government is now taking up the issue. The report concluded ganja was “culturally entrenched” in Jamaica.

I’ll say. I’ve been to Jamaica once when I flew in for about 6 hours before going to Cuba (you can’t fly directly from the States to Cuba dummy. Castro and Khrushchev almost nuked us in ’63). During my short stay in a palatial resort with tons of Red Stripe, I was offered marijuana roughly 5, 560 times (I’m rounding down). I smoked some of the herb, but declined to purchase because I was flying to a country that regularly jails drug users and Cuban prison is best avoided. That being said, the herb I did smoke was right out in the open on a modestly reclusive beach. And it was very very good.

Flying back from Cuba a few weeks later, I sat next to a guy that had spent his Spring Break there (again we had to do a layover because of the embargo). This person told me when he and his friends arrived, they ended up taking a bus to their hotel. At the first red light after leaving Montego Bay’s urban airport, he said almost 20 or 30 guys walked right out of the woods holding stalks, STALKS of herb so large he had never seen anything like it (this guy had dreads too).

So there you go. Smoking herb in Jamaica may be illegal, but it’s not something I would worry to much about. I mean Rastafari practice a religion based on herb.

[Pic via Pimp My Space; ABC 2 News]