Wikipedia:Peer review/Cannabis in Seychelles/archive1

Cannabis in Seychelles

I've listed this article for peer review because I'd like to receive some feedback on the overall flow of the page as well as if it fits within the guidelines of what makes a good Wikipedia page, including the tone, relevant media and referencing style.

Thanks, Akriwal (talk) 01:24, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi Akriwal, thanks for your peer review request. I've been through the document and made edits, as well as making notes for you below. Before I get to those notes, two points:

• Most of the comments below are suggestions for changes or how I altered things, so before I sound too critical let me be clear that this was an excellent article. It is well researched, covers the subject thoroughly, and sets out what a reader would want to know.
• My writing style may differ from English as used in Seychelles, so if you feel anything would be written different in that style of English, don't hesitate to adjust.

Images

The copyright information for the image of the cannabis crop image says that it is available under Creative Commons 4.0, but it appears to have been taken from a commercial media website. Please check if the licensing is correct, and if it is not correct, remove the image.

The same goes for the image of Volcere's leaflet and the photo of the banner.

Header

Certain statements in this header don't seem backed by the article's contents. For example, it said that "Recently the fight for legalization of cannabis has seen an upsurge of support from certain political candidates and members of the general public." However, only one political candidate is named as supporting legalisation, and it's not clear that the support is an "upsurge", a word which implies huge support. Similarly, the statement "politicians have argued its legalization would help deal with the high prevalence of heroin abuse" isn't backed; the article doesn't show any members of the Assembly or in other positions supporting legalisation. I have amended the header to better reflect the facts in the article.

Legislation and policy

I have added headings to separate what I feel are the three sections: past laws, current situation, and possible future changes to the law. You may consider putting 'current status' first, since that is likely what readers will want to know first and it informs the history.

History

I struggled a bit to understand the first paragraph. What I think happened is:

• 1882: Mauritius passes a law making cannabis illegal. Since the Seychelles islands were part of Mauritius, this law took effect there.
• 1883-1887: Mauritius reopens cannabis trade (presumably making cannabis legal again? But not repealing the 1882 law?) But it is unclear if this applies to the Seychelles islands (why? Surely at this stage the Seychelles are considered just part of Mauritius and so if Mauritius repeals or alters a law then the same happens in Seychelles?)
• 1975: Seychelles becomes an independent nation. The government in 1975 decides to copy Mauritius's 1882 law on cannabis in whole and make it part of Seychelles' laws.

Is that a correct understanding? If so, can you make this clearer? If that's not correct, can you update this paragraph to make the timeline clearer?

I do not have access to "The Laws of Seychelles Revised, Volume 1", so I have not checked the factual accuracy of this paragraph.

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I have reworded some parts of the next paragraph. I also added that the vote to pass the act was unanimous, since that provides the reader some feel as to how much political will there is for legalisation versus restrictions. I have also added quotes from the Minister who tabled the bill since they illustrate what the intent of the 2016 act was.

It would be great if you add more history of which acts applied when, for example, was there an act before the 1990 one?

Proposed amendments

It has been nearly a year since the regulations allowing medical cannabis were gazetted, so this section needs updating. What has happened? the source said that the changes would come into effect on 1 July 2020, but this article doesn't say if this happened or not. Has the Assembly debated it, and if so how did it go? If not, why not? Is the time taken to debate the regulations typical in Seychelles, or has this gone unusually long without either becoming law or being rejected?

Legalisation efforts

The article said that "a variety of groups have mobilised to push for legalization of cannabis for recreational as well as medicinal use." But the article seems to only mention one group?

Recreational

Reworded some long sentences with multiple clauses and broke up longer paragraphs.

I looked through Mia Beaumont's thesis, but wasn't able to find the statistics of Seychelles having 5,000–6,000 heroin users, or that this was the highest per capita for any country. Can you add either page references or quotes to the reference to confirm that these facts are in that document.

The number of signatures on the 2017 petition is unclear. A news article of August 15, 2017, said that it had 5,000 signatures (at time of writing) and was to close that day. However, in a 2019 interview Volcere said that the petition got over 10,000 signatures in the first few weeks. Can you search for articles after the petition was presented to the government, to try to find a final signature tally? Also, it would be good to clear up the dates of the petition; as I said the first news article says that the petition closed on August 15, but a later news article said the petition was made in October 2017.

Make sure to keep your writing in line with the sources and not going further. For example, the article previously said: "Gonthier stated that while she was aware of the potential of medicinal cannabis to treat terminal and chronically ill patients," However, in the source Gonthier does not discuss specific uses of medical cannabis, only that there is potential for medical cannabis in general. It can be good to use direct quotes to express a person's views. Direct quotes are allowed if they are not too long and are attributed.

Medical

I cut down a lot of details of Volcere reacting and commenting on things. The article makes his case well and some important events get lost in the excessive detail.

As above, this section should say what has happened to these gazetted regulations.

Usage

Even sentences like "The most applicable statistics regarding general use amongst the citizens of the Seychelles comes from the Agency for the Prevention of Drug Abuse and Rehabilitation of the Seychelles." need sources. If you wish to claim that this agency has the best data, you will need to provide evidence of that. In my rewrite, I have presented their statistics without claiming that they are the most relevant.

The level of detail in paragraphs like "It uses self-administered questionnaires to obtain data relating to morbidity and mortality of its respondents. Within the Seychelles, the GSHS has been run twice to date, once in 2007 and then again in 2015. On both occasions the survey was structured in a two-stage cluster sample design, targeting students aged typically between 11 and 17 years in age." is probably excessive, but I've left it in.

From my reading of Alwan et al 2011, they found that behaviours and circumstances correlated with cannabis use, which is different from saying it caused the use. They do go to that in the discussion but that wasn't fully clear in the article.

General

Further research should be into:

• the status of the 2020 medical regulations;
• the general support for legalisation in Seychelles (eg polls);
• Information about production – is cannabis generally grown in the country, or imported from overseas;
• Any other information about harm done by cannabis in Seychelles;
• How is cannabis used in Seychelles eg is it typically smoked or prepared otherwise, is it typically smoked at certain times or days, etc.

Spelling: The article used both "offence(s)" and "offense". I stuck with "offence" throughout. Either is good as long as it is consistent. The article does sometime seem to use American spellings and sometime British spellings, so check that the spellings chosen are appropriate for Seychelles English.

HenryCrun15 (talk) 07:30, 10 January 2021 (UTC)