KINGSTON, Jamaica – Triston Thompson, chief opportunity explorer for Tacaya, a consulting and brokerage firm for Jamaica’s nascent legal cannabis industry, calls the latest shortage of marijuana in  the country  “a cultural embarrassment”.

The government’s Cannabis Licensing Authority — which has authorized 29 cultivators and issued 73 licenses for transportation, retail, processing and other activities — said there is no shortage of marijuana in the regulated industry.

However, farmers and activists say weed sold via legal dispensaries known as herb houses is out of reach for many given that it still costs five to 10 times more than what is on the street.

Heavy rains followed by extended drought, a drop in the number of marijuana farmers, and an increase in local consumption have caused a shortage in the island’s illegal market that.experts say is the worst they’ve seen.

Heavy rains during last year’s hurricane season pummeled marijuana fields that were later scorched in the drought that followed, causing tens of thousands of dollars in losses, according to farmers who cultivate pot outside the legal system.

The addition of strict COVID-19 measures, including a 6 p.m. curfew that meant farmers couldn’t tend to their fields at the routine times at night.

Some farmers are down to cultivating about half of the poundage that they usually do.

“It destroyed everything,” said Daneyel Bozra, who grows marijuana in the southwest part of Jamaica, in a historical village called Accompong founded by escaped 18th-century slaves known as Maroons.\

Some activists believe the pandemic and a loosening of Jamaica’s marijuana laws has led to an increase in local consumption that has contributed to the scarcity, even if the pandemic has put a dent in the arrival of ganja-seeking tourists.

“Last year was the worst year…We’ve never had this amount of loss,” Thompson said. “It’s something so laughable that cannabis is short in Jamaica.”

Paul Burke, CEO of Jamaica’s Ganja Growers and Producers Association, said in a phone interview that people are no longer afraid of being locked up now that the government allows possession of small amounts. He said the stigmatization against ganja has diminished and more people are appreciating its claimed therapeutic and medicinal value during the pandemic.

Burke also said that some traditional small farmers have stopped growing in frustration because they can’t afford to meet requirements for the legal market while police continue to destroy what he described as “good ganja fields.”