Opinion: Bill C-15 fans the flames it tries to extinguish
After more than 80 years of fear, arrests and incarceration, it's time to rethink our approach to a mostly benign substance. It's time to legalize marijuana.
Dateline:
VANKLEEK HILL
There's a scene in L'Écho du Long Sault — the recent Show commemorating Hawkesbury's 150th anniversary — that features alcohol prohibition. Police officers dumping barrels of moonshine as though it were going to make a difference.
"Booo!" shouted one man in the audience, drawing some claps and laughter.
Ah, the 1920s prohibition. How quaint it seems now!
While alcohol might be here to stay - and people mostly remember prohibiton as the time of gangsters and speakeasies with free-flowing booze - we are seeing the same attitude today on marijuana.
The Canadian federal government estimates it spends about $400 million a year enforcing marijuana laws.
Yet according to Health Canada, the drug's use has doubled in the last 10 years.
This never-ending campaign wastes officers' time and has criminalized hundreds of thousands of harmless people.
Worse still, the government is now escalating the war on growers and dealers, which will make gangs and cartels even more ruthless and dangerous. Bill C-15 is worse than doing nothing.
Like all minimum sentencing laws, it will do nothing to stop crime; no criminal intends to get caught and the law is based on the impossible idea of police catching, charging, and convicting every grower.
The root problem - that marijuana sales represent $1 billion in illegal sales every year in Ontario, fueling organized crime - will continue unabated and unchallenged.
So here's an idea for real change: Why not legalize the stuff?
Glengarry-Prescott-Russell MP Pierre Lemieux says marijuana is a dangerous narcotic. Canadians know that's not true.
You cannot overdose on marijuana. It is not addictive. It does not lead to fights and can do wonders for sick people.
Plus, even the federal government admits that no one has ever died from cannabis use.
Moreover, we Canadians already have the highest rate of marijuana use in the world; we smoke more than the Dutch, who legalized it years ago.
Some studies, such as the Canadian Addiction Survey, claim that more than 40% of Canadians have tried cannabis at least once. For people aged 18 to 24, this rises to an incredible 70 per cent.
According to the Conservatives, Bill C-15 will somehow reduce the marijuana supply and stop Canada's biggest cash crop. (Estimates say marijuana sales are three times greater than those of wheat nationwide, if you compare dollars.)
So after 86 years of raids, arrests, handcuffs and criminal records, growers will suddenly disappear because they are afraid of jail?
I don't believe it.
We all agree that organized crime is a problem. Gangs and cartels are something that no community should have to deal with.
But marijuana isn't what's causing organized crime. Prohibition causes it. With Bill C-15, the government is making things worse.
We here in Prescott-Russell are proud of our regional wineries and micro-breweries - and we also know that alcohol poisoning and liver problems kill thousands of Canadians every year.
Couldn't we move towards a world where we are proud of a local pot field? Legalize, educate and reduce harm.
In 2002 the Canadian Senate was unanimous in saying marijuana is relatively benign; less harmful than alcohol or tobacco.
But still, the Conservative government thinks anyone who grows their own plants should go to jail; be locked in a cell; be made unable to work; be labeled a criminal.
Originally they wanted six months' incarceration for growing one plant.
What we're seeing now is a campaign of misinformation and political posturing on marijuana, which I can only assume will fade over time.
Like previous establishment superstitions about rock and roll, dancing and comic books being a ‘moral corruptor' of children, eventually fears of marijuana will ease.
With time it should become included in the long line of products which are legal despite not being harmless. (Like soft drinks or chewing tobacco).
It's especially a shame the Liberals went along with Bill C-15 after coming so close to decriminalization under Jean Chrétien.
Congratulations to the NDP and Bloc Quebecois for voting against this one.
However, with a vote of 195 to 54, it seems there's a long way to go before marijuana prohibition is made history.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Comments
Decriminalization
bill c-15
Public being duped
Recent science out of Germany shows how cannabinoids stimulate the body's production of TIMP-1, which helps healthy cells resist cancer invasion.
www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20071226/pot-slows-cancer-in-test-tube
Pot fights cancer. MP Pierre Lemieux thinks you should go to jail for fighting cancer.
Having no economic, environmental, foreign policy or social plans, the so-called “conservatives” are using crime to pander to their myopic, visceral, misinformed and punishment-happy voter base. The spineless fops in the Liberal party are merely going along with it so that they won't be painted as “soft on crime” in the next election, and can pander to the same fools.
Bill C-15 appears designed specifically to increase crime. Mandatory sentences will scare off the mom-'n'-pop pot growers who represent direct market competition to the gangsters. With the little guys out of the game, the big guys will get more business and profit. This will lead to more violence, which the police and government will use as justification for even more draconian laws, more cops with bigger budgets and more powers, and further suppression of our civil rights and liberties.
The whole thing is a scam designed to make it necessary to hire more cops, build more jails and spend more taxpayers' dollars on a policy that further subsidizes organized crime. And Canadians deserve it. They have stayed home in droves on election day, and have repeatedly elected prohibitionist hacks who insist that the way to solve the problems caused by prohibition is through even more prohibition. Canadians are reaping as they have sown.
Finally, if we accept that the government can tell us what we can do with our own bodies then we must accept their ownership. That means the government owns us all – like pets, cattle, or slaves – and that we have only the rights that they grant. Anyone willing to accept that deserves no rights.
Russell Barth
-Federally Licensed Medical Marijuana User
Patients Against Ignorance and Discrimination on Cannabis
(PAIDOC)www.paidoc.org
Weed is the breakfast of champions
For centuries, this near-harmless additive-to-life has been the butt of serious intolerance. The scariest thing however, is that the facts are known to most, and they are readily available for the rest of the population. The criminalization of marijuana is not enforced because of a simple fear of it. It is enforced because it allows one political party to harvest a minority vote, but one that is deemed all important: the safe vote.
White suburbia is the problem, not our politicians. It’s like telling bible-belters to legalize abortion!
Convince your parents, the remaining echoes of baby-boomer values, and the problem should solve itself.
If all the prudes in our country took a mandatory toke from a boiling bong o’ blunders, then perhaps it would humble them a bit. I bet we would see a dramatic change in the demography of this drug’s usage, and more appropriately, in the level of acceptance from the groovy public that elects our timid leaders in the first place.
I am not a hippy, but I play one on TV.
Thank you for the wise words, Phil.
I came from reddit also,
Reason will prevail
I read your article, having followed a link from Reddit.com. You have succinctly stated the root cause of the problem and pointed out the fallacies of prohibition. History has certainly repeated itself with a vengeance. Organized continent spanning cartels, corrupt politicians and law enforcers, prison bursting with non-violent "criminals." It must end.
I can only hope that the persons responsible see the light and stop the war on people. Let me also point out that Portugal decriminalized all drugs five years ago. The results as you can guess, are wonderful. I won't quote any statistics since I don't have them to hand.
Last Call To Stop Bill C-15