Trashed street

A Beaconite who works out near the Governor’s Office at a small gym on Main Street regularly observes chickens savagely attacking garbage bags left outside the Romasco Building across the street.

Such was the case on Tuesday afternoon. The Beaconite can’t blame the chickens: It looks like there’s some tasty stuff in those trash bags. However, he feels bad for the nearby residents who have to put up with the bottles, cans, old Beacon newspapers and other waste strewn about the street on a weekly basis due to the chickens’ mayhem. The Beaconite strongly suggests that whoever leaves that trash on the street do the community a favour and invest in some cans to prevent the carnage.

Turtle videos

A Beaconite who went turtle tagging on Sunday (see page 4) would like to say thanks to Miss BVI Erika Creque. While he was swimming along trying to take photos of turtles, his waterproof-camera battery died. Ms. Creque kindly allowed him to use her GoPro, which took great videos, and then she swung by the office later in the week to deliver them. Check out the Beacon’s Facebook page to see what it’s like to capture a 100-pound sea turtle.

Pot laws

At a press conference last Thursday, a reporter asked Premier Dr. Orlando Smith whether his administration would consider amending the territory’s marijuana laws. Dr. Smith avoided any specifics in his response, but he did say that his government had discussed the issue and might consider alleviating punishments for residents caught possessing minimal amounts of the plant. This Beaconite, however, thinks the government should at least consider one other option: outright legalisation and taxation of marijuana. Though it may be doubtful that the territory’s socially conservative population would embrace such a proposal, the Beaconite is well aware of one argument that seems to change minds: money. The Beaconite’s home state, Washington, voted to legalise marijuana in 2011 and rolled out a retail market in 2014. Between 2015 and 2019, the state government is projecting $1 billion in total state tax revenue from marijuana producers, processors and retailers. Now, obviously Washington state’s market size is bigger than the Virgin Islands’ — the Evergreen State is home to seven million people, about 250 times the population of this territory. However, a simple market scale indicates the VI could potentially make $4 million from an identical system over the same four years, which is no small chunk of change. That number doesn’t take into account a large number of variables, like population demographics, culture and infrastructure, but it also leaves off one factor that would likely make such a market considerably more profitable: tourism. Of the more than one million annual visitors to the territory, you can bet at least a few would be down to take a visit to a marijuana retailer on the beach. On the other hand, others might opt to go elsewhere — which underscores the importance of considering the matter very carefully before making any changes.

Sewage in the streets

A Beaconite is in despair. Last Thursday evening, he was jogging in front of PicSmith Medical Services — the private clinic next door to the Governor’s Office, which is owned by Premier Dr. Orlando Smith and Deputy Premier Dr. Kedrick Pickering — when he realised that he was running through water. “That’s strange,” he thought. “It hasn’t been raining.” That’s when the odour hit him: sewage. Unfortunately, he was already in the middle of the noxious river, and he had no other choice but to jog through to the other side. Along the way, it occurred to him that if sewage runs in the street in front of the offices of the three most powerful leaders in the territory, there may be precious little hope for everyone else. Still, the Beaconite took comfort that there was no sewage flowing past his own nearby apartment that night.

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