Should marijuana be made legal? One man’s opinion.

By Ray Rivers

BURLINGTON, ON.  July 2, 2013  Canada was the first nation in the world to ban cannabis, back in 1923, driven to action by a transplanted Alberta magistrate, eugenicist and racist, pen-named ‘Janey Canuck’.   A prolific Maclean’s Magazine columnist whose book, ‘The Black Candle’, warned about the dangers of “Chinese opium peddlers” and “Negro drug dealers;” she convinced legislators to adopt prohibition without a word of public debate.

 So it was fitting that Maclean’s, in a recent issue on cannabis, reviewed the facts, acknowledged the error of its ways, and is now calling for legalization.  The facts can be summarized as follows:

 1.  Safety.  Well nothing is perfectly safe, but puffing ‘weed’ is safer than drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or adding salt to your steak. It is not addictive, doesn’t ‘gateway’ to other drugs, and smoking doesn’t cause cancer – in fact, may protect against it.

 2.  Wasting resources.  I thought this would appeal to fiscal conservatives, but alas!  Enforcement is costly, so is imprisonment and so are the courts.  People behind bars aren’t contributing to the economy, they are draining it.

3.  Protecting Children. Despite prohibition, more Canadian children have tried ‘grass’ than anywhere else in the west, including decriminalized Spain.

4.  Eroding societal values.  If the law is an ass, people will ignore it and hate the cops.  Legalization would kill black-markets and gangsters faster than a speeding bullet.  And aren’t prisons just training academies for inmates wanting to become better criminals?

 5.  Provincial budgets.  The LCBO gives1.2 billion dollars a year to the provincial government, in addition to the 13% HST and 10% licensing fee.  Why wouldn’t we want to regulate the production and sales of recreational cannabis and use the revenues to pay for public services?

 ‘The Black Candle’ was wrong, but it is never too late to do the right thing.  Back in the early 1970‘s The Royal Commission on the Non-Medical Use of Drugs (LeDain Report) called for de-criminalization of cannabis.  In 2002 a Senate committee reported that “… drug legislation was largely based on a moral panic, racist sentiment…” and also called for legalization.  Chretien and Martin started drifting towards de-criminalization but then Stephen Harper, another transplanted Albertan, like Ms. Canuck, came along to reverse progress.  Drug enforcement is back big time.  Today growing six hemp plants will get you an automatic 6 months in the big-house.

 Richard Nixon’s war on drugs in the US was an absolute failure.  Jails are half-filled with drug inmates, drug crime is at an all-time high and drug use in America has never been higher.  In light of this, many states have taken action to start decriminalizing drugs.  Washington and Colorado, are legalizing, developing infrastructure and rules for cultivation and marketing.  The US feds, like their Canadian counter parts, have ultimate jurisdiction, but they’re not interfering.  Is that because their last three presidents were self-proclaimed potheads?

 Stephen Harper claims to never have smoked ‘pot’.  So his head should be clear – right?  Not at all.  Last year, addressing the Summit of the Americas, he admitted “…that the current approach is not working. But it is not clear what we should do.”  Still ignorance hasn’t deterred him from going back to what doesn’t work – aggressive criminalization. 

 Since the Conservatives came to power in 2006, drug-related arrests have mushroomed by 41% and over 400,000 people have been arrested.  And, Harper can’t even articulate why.  In a 2010 YouTube clip the PM miserably failed to make a single coherent point in defense of his neo-con drug policy – just ended up mumbling something about drug cartels. 

 Now, if Harper is concerned about drug cartels he needs to visit Mexico.  That country used to have one of the toughest policies on drugs anywhere, which ultimately led to its deadly drug wars.   The wars became so vicious that the Mexican government has now decriminalized small quantities of all major narcotics. 

 Of course, Mr. Harper should have gone to learn the Mexican experience before he saddled us with his ill-advised, retro drug laws.  And why not take along his conservative ally, Rob Ford?  Toronto’s controversial mayor might be interested to know that smoking crack-cocaine is now legal in Mexico. 

Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat after which he decided to write and has become a  political animator. Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson in 1995, the year Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution swept the province.

The views of the author are his alone