Monthly Cannabis New Articles

Who we are / Becoming a Member / News / Links / Location / Contact us / Home / Hemp Info

Marijuana reform must go further
Source: National Post (Canada), 03-07-05

In the wake of last week's tragedy in Alberta, some are calling on the federal government to scrap its stalled marijuana reform legislation, which would decriminalize possession of small amounts of the substance. Such calls should be rejected. If anything, the event shows that drug reform must go further.

In Thursday's quadruple murder, a known criminal shot four RCMP officers while they were investigating his property northwest of Edmonton, a property whose uses included a small marijuana grow-op. Nothing written here or elsewhere can even partly mitigate the man's brutal act -- that much is obvious. Nevertheless, Canadians must ask themselves whether one of the policies that James Roszko was violating -- drug prohibition, particularly as applied to marijuana -- is one that police officers should be risking their lives to enforce. The answer, as we see it, is no.

The marijuana industry attracts men like James Roszko not because there is anything intrinsically evil about pot, but because it is an illegal substance that, by definition, only criminals are in a position to provide for consumers. As with alcohol prohibition in the United States, the effect of criminalizing marijuana has been to create a business opportunity for well-armed thugs.

This would not be a reason to question current policy if the legal campaign against marijuana were worth the cost. After all, police put their lives on the line all the time when they patrol our inner cities or cruise our highways -- yet we accept those risks because we recognize they are part of the price of safe cities and streets. But in the case of pot, criminalization has been a failure: Marijuana is still freely available at a low price to most high school students. Indeed, it is so prevalent that most police simply look the other way when they see it being smoked.

Moreover, it is not clear why this prevalence should overly alarm us. Marijuana is not addictive, nor generally criminogenic. And while studies have linked long-term pot use to cardiovascular impairments and decreased cognitive function, the threat to human health is minuscule compared with that posed by alcohol and tobacco -- as well as, for that matter, fast food, motorcycles, double-diamond ski trails and unprotected sex. The simple truth is that the war on drugs is far more deadly than drugs themselves. As has been noted elsewhere, the number of officers who died on Thursday exceeded -- by four -- the total number of people known to medical science to have died from a marijuana overdose, ever.

This brings us to the marijuana reform legislation being considered by our government. We have argued in this space before that marijuana should be legalized, and that it should become a government-regulated substance like alcohol and tobacco. Because these latter substances are legal, there is little attraction for criminals -- since they cannot earn the enormous premiums associated with contraband. RCMP officers do not die raiding tobacco grow-ops or Quonset huts full of bootlegging stills. The same should be true of marijuana.

Unfortunately, our government is not willing to go that far. The legislation that has been languishing in the Liberals' files for several years now would only decriminalize marijuana possession, and only in small quantities. Growing and selling marijuana would still be illegal. This means the criminal class would continue to monopolize the trade, with their hidden grow-ups and loaded guns.

It is time for common sense to prevail. We Canadians often pride ourselves on being more sober-minded than our American neighbours, resisting the chest-thumping bravado that we associate with militarism. Well then, let us prove it now. The U.S.-led war on drugs is a failure. To borrow a phrase that was often heard in the dying days of the Vietnam War: "How do you ask a police officer to be the last man to die fighting marijuana?"