A kind of political correctness dictates that one should not be too hard on Bob Marley, who died of cancer in 1981 aged 36. His loping, mid-tempo reggae sounds slightly vapid to my ears, but for many non-Jamaicans, Bob Marley is reggae; he remains an international Rasta celebrity, honoured with a waxwork at Madame Tussaud’s as well as a Jamaican Order of Merit (the third-highest honour in the Jamaican honours system).
Last week, the Bob Marley estate announced that a special ‘Marley Natural’ marijuana blend was to go on sale legally in the United States next year. A private equity group based in Seattle, Privateer Holdings, has teamed up with Marley’s widow and children to mass-produce an ‘heirloom’ strain of Jamaican ganja in the form of lotions, creams and loose leaves. Marley is poised to become the face of the international movement to legalise marijuana.
Ironically, in spite of the Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller’s pledge that marijuana would be legalised this month, the drug is still illegal in Marley’s native Jamaica.
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