Hi there I'm resident in Trinidad and Tobago

Hello everyone, as a resident of Trinidad and Tobago, I would like to share my experiences with ganja in this particular Caribbean island, and I would like to hear from others living here their own experiences.
Basically, at one time, about ten years ago, weed was common and readily available in my neck of the woods: it was also dirt cheap and high quality. Unfortunately, thanks to Big Brother, the US of A the situation has changed dramatically. The last time I was able to score good weed was in 2005; since then, a type of ganja, soaked in formaldehyde , called compressed, has been almost exclusively the only kind of weed available.
The weed is soaked in formaldehyde as a preservative, because nowadays, because of Big Brother, virtually all local marijuana growing operations have been shut down; the preservative soaked crap weed comes from the smaller islands notably St Vincent. The reason for the preservative process is because of the long journey the weed makes on it's way to Trinidad, and the formaldehyde makes the weed unsmokable by all except the most hard core drug addicts.
I love good Herb, and it is frustrating to me to be living on a tropical island, with ideal growing conditions capable of producing the best weed on the planet, and yet not being able to score any good, natural unprocessed bud!
Some advice for those who come to Trinidad: being white, I am warning any white folk who want to score weed on their visit to Trinidad not to go to areas with lots of black folks; they see the colour of your skin, and you could become a target for robbery. If you want a contact see if you can make an East Indian friend who has contacts, and can help you get weed without risking your personal safety. Not to be racist or anything, but I live here and I am sharing my personal experience: My only reliable contact was an east indian friend who unfortunately has now migrated; the blacks I have dealt with have always tried to screw me over, so I consider myself to have learned my lesson the hard way!

That sucks bro!
Trinidad and Tobago does sound like a nice place though.

Are there no private growers? Just people who have it growing on their property inconspicuously?

Let me answer that by describing the conditions in a Trinidad jail: cells with walls smeared with feces, prisoners forced to sleep on the bare ground, a slop bucket for a toilet, the weakest inmate always being the one made to sleep with his head right next to the slop bucket, in addition to the possibility of being raped by his fellow cellmates: this is what faces anyone who is caught by the police with even a marijuana roach in their possession.
It is this kind of threat that has forced weed culture deeply underground; if there are private growers, they will have to grow the stuff indoors because there are regular helicopter patrols; I hear the police helicopter buzzing over my house nearly every other day. The ironic thing is that Trinidad and Tobago is a major hub in the trade in cocaine and other hard drugs, which enter the country from south america in forty foot containers at the port, and proceed on their journey north unmolested. Under orders from the drug barons who own the government, those containers are never inspected.
The government in conjunction with the United States is using aggressive tactics against marijuana cultivators to make it look as if they are doing something about the drug trade, when in actual fact it is a huge scam that they are perpetrating; the drug trade is more lucrative than ever, and the crime statistics in Trinidad and Tobago prove it.

It is a shame that cocaine and Heroin have clouded the minds of people that all drugs are bad news..