Let's Decriminalize the Marijuana Fiasco

[Jess Stone]

Let's Decriminalize the Marijuana Fiasco

 

by Hal Sisson, Q.C., Canadian Correspondent in Law

 

 

As I purchased a mocha latte at a coffee shop in the Cook Street village area of Victoria, I noticed two senior citizen ladies wearing red jackets with ‘Crime Watch’ - Volunteer -- emblazoned both back and front.

 

Because I was writing a novel, whose content involved the decriminalization of marijuana, I entered into conversation with them. “Do you find there is any significant amount of marijuana dealing or smoking around the village?” I asked politely. They invited me to sit at their table.

 

 

“Not that we’ve noticed,” was the joint reply.

 

“What kind of crime do you watch for?” I asked. “A criminal is only a person who has been caught committing a dishonest deed but can’t afford a good lawyer, or one who hasn’t sufficient capital to form a corporation. Do you see any of them here today?”

 

“Hard to tell. We just wear these jackets to convey the impression to criminals that they are being watched.”

 

“There is a crime going on right now,” I pointed out.

 

“What crime?” They both expressed surprise as they glanced around the café.

 

“The price of these coffee drinks - that’s open daylight robbery! Now let me ask you ladies -- are you in favour of decriminalizing marijuana?”

 

“No,” was the emphatic joint reply.

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because it will lead innocent people to use harder drugs.”

 

“Are you really convinced that argument is correct? Holding hands can sometimes lead to fornication, but not as often as one would like.”

 

“You’re being facetious my good man, and I don’t know that we are entirely appreciative…”

 

“You do know why Baptists don’t make love standing up?” I continued.

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because it may lead to dancing! Do you ladies want to try some pot,” I asked, “so you’ll know with what you are dealing. I could get some and you could test your reaction. It won’t hurt you, you won’t get hung over or mean.”

 

“Don’t smoke.”

 

“We’ll put it in brownies.”

 

“I didn’t know you could do that,” said one of the ladies, “but I’d rather have a drink of scotch.”

 

“You do know that alcohol or tobacco are ten times more addictive than cannabis?”

 

Well that was the end of the conversation, as the ladies plead pressing engagements elsewhere and left

 

There is a criminal conspiracy at work against the hemp plant and its derivatives, against marijuana, pot, weed, and reefers, whatever you want to call it. The plot is masterminded by the politicians and the police, who have made marijuana use a federal crime, in the so-called war on drugs. What a laugh that is. Figures in Canada are likely similar, but that boondoggle in the United States has caused the American taxpayers $70 billion a year and over the past 35 years costs approach a trillion dollars. Result? Drugs remain CHEAPER and MORE available that 35 years ago.

 

 

 

Millions of Canadians have tried marijuana. In B.C. alone, pot-growing has generated six billion a year in annual sales, the West Coast’s biggest industry after forestry or tourism. Prohibition against cannabis is not a sound public policy, so why doesn’t the government implement a fully legal regulatory regime for marijuana for everybody? They have done so for the far more dangerous and addictive drug of alcohol, which the reader knows is sold most anywhere you want to buy it in the world. For those who do not wish to become out of control or morally unwary, unlike alcohol, marijuana offers a quiet unassuming high that allows one to be creative or thoughtful or just relaxed.

 

If there was a similar fully legalized system as that pertaining to alcohol, people could grow marijuana commercially and sell it in stores licensed by the government. It could be subject to health controls, quality controls and taxes, and it wouldn’t have to be more expensive than other fruit or vegetable products. And it can be grown anywhere. All you need to grow it is air, dirt and water, and it has been used throughout the world for thousands of years.

 

So what is the most recent news regarding the by-product of hemp in Canada? What does our present Conservative Christian fundamentalist-minded holier-than-thou government propose to do re marijuana? On 20 November 20 2007, they unveiled legislation to create the first mandatory prison terms in Canada for people convicted of trafficking illicit drugs, including those who grow marijuana for profit.

 

The new bill proposes: a mandatory six-month sentence for growing as little as one marijuana plant for the purposes of trafficking. A two-year mandatory term for running a marijuana-growing operation of 500 plants or more. They are also proposing a doubling of the maximum prison term for cannabis production from seven to fourteen years.

 

“We want to put organized crime out of business,” said Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.

 

“You can never beat organized crime as long as you have prohibition,” said Marc Emery, Vancouver’s ‘Prince of Pot’.

 

Which of those statements do you agree with, which makes more sense?

 

Years of criminalization have failed, gangs have prospered from it, have flourished and expanded. When are we going to elect politicians with enough understanding and courage, with the guts to legalize all drug use, and certainly the least dangerous and addictive of any of them, marijuana. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same stupid things over and over again, which is what our government is doing. Cut off the cash flow to the gangs instead of actively adopting a policy that is de facto in support of organized crime. Far from being congratulated for their stance on drugs, Harper and MP’s who back the new law are being about as short-sighted as you can get, and should actually get mandatory jail sentences for aiding and abetting the drug trade. But certainly the electorate should take appropriate action at the ballot box and elect members with the ability to properly analyze the problem.

 

As Dr. Jim Hackler, PhD, Professor of Criminology at the University of Victoria states in his book Canadian Criminology Strategies and Perspectives, in a chapter entitled "Drug Crime: the Consequences of Hypocrisy":

 

“Despite the impression one gets from the media, research suggests that heavy drinking does considerably more harm to one’s health than the use of illicit drugs. If one were to use harm to human beings as a reason for making substances illegal, alcohol (or tobacco) would certainly rank higher on the scale of undesirable substances that those which are currently illegal. For illicit drugs the major harm seems to arise from the fact they are illegal.”

 

Here’s an editorial from the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, reprinted in the Times Colonist of Victoria, under the heading ‘Time to Legalize Drugs’:

 

“Legalization sounds like a strange way to protect kids from drugs, because people commonly make the mistake of thinking that a criminal ban on drugs is the highest form of drug control possible. Legalizing drugs, they believe, means surrendering control, and giving our youth easier access to substances that may harm them. In fact, exactly the opposite is true.

 

The reason prohibition doesn’t protect kids is much the same reason it fails generally: economics. Banning drugs makes them very expensive. That makes them very profitable. That makes an unlimited number of people willing to do just about anything to sell them. The customer’s age is meaningless, his cash is what matters.

 

By criminalizing drugs, we gave up control of their sale. We handed it to biker gangs and the neighbourhood dealer - who are only too happy to sell to your teenager. If drugs were legalized, checks can be created to ensure there are no sales to minors. If drugs are one day sold in private establishments, tough spot-checking could easily make it the owner’s self-interest to keep minors out.

 

Determined teenagers will always be able to get their hands on things they shouldn’t. But the system can be tightened to make it much more difficult. To do it, we have to take back control of the drug trade. We have to talk about legalizing drugs.”

 

We were about to do that once. Remember the Federal Le Dain Commission in 1973? It recommended ending criminal charges for marijuana possession. Jean Chrétien stood up in Parliament and announced this was about to happen. So why didn’t it happen? Why is marijuana still illegal? Why is it a crime to cultivate the weed, be a commercial grower, or traffic in the product? Why isn’t it a fully legalized system where people could grow marijuana commercially and sell it in stores licensed by the government, subject to health and quality controls and taxes? The existing system is a complete failure and billions of dollars have been sunk into enforcement without any great effect.

 

You merely have to look to the United States to see that is true. The U.S. Department of Drugs applied tremendous political pressure on Canada not to legalize marijuana and of course we folded like a circus tent and it was never legalized. And that brings us to the law enforcement agencies and a lot of other related people, who might be out of work if grass was made legal, and who spend a great deal of wasted time allegedly fighting the war on drugs. Their numbers are great but hard to count, but they should have realized by now that a tough law-and-order approach is not working. It is the law itself that causes the bootleg of the product and the crime. There are many models around the world that are better to copy than the U.S. so-called “war on drugs”.

 

So now it is proposed that B.C.’s already crowded jails will squeeze in hundreds if not thousands of marijuana growers per year if mandatory sentencing is enacted. The number of people employed in 215,000 Canadian marijuana grow operations number about 500,000. They have a vested interest in the present system of illegality that keeps the price high and their grow-ops very profitable. About 1.8 million British Columbians say they have used marijuana, a majority of the adult population; and as long as demand is strong and the public considers marijuana use acceptable, supplies will be there. It is going to become a sort of civil war, users and peddlers vs. police and the justice system, while the taxpayer pays the cost.

 

There are currently 2,735 inmates in provincial jail and 80% of those are double bunked. The province is going to need a new prison. Maybe we’ll also follow the U.S. example and privatize the building of prisons. Somebody, I say somebody, going to make a lot of money on that bit of business. One could go on and on regarding the stupidity involved here but it is long past time to cut to the bottom line.

 

If alcohol was proven too dangerous to be left in the hands of organized crime, the same is true of drugs. Certainly true for one that provides relaxation and sedation for the user - marijuana.

 

The War on Drugs is a Farce!

 

Postscript

 

If you want a little history of hemp, a few salient facts are as follows:

 

In modern times, by the turn of the last century in North America, nearly four generations had been using cannabis, and doctors in earlier times, and even today do not consider it habit forming, anti-social or at all violent.

 

World Fairs and International Expositions from the 1860’s through the early 1900’s often featured a popular Turkish Hashish smoking concession, where fair goers took their friends and family to smoke hashish so as to enhance their fair experience. Cannabis extract medicines were regularly prescribed to American children. The Police Gazette estimated there were over 500 smoking parlours in New York city in the 1880’s, and they were still there in the 1920s -- more of these parlours than there were ‘speakeasies’ during the same 1920s alcohol prohibition period.

 

Then came another change in 1937 caused by William Randolph Hearst’s lies, yellow journalism and racist newspaper articles and ravings, which from then on were cited as facts in Congressional testimony by Harry J. Anslinger of the Federal bureau of Narcotics. Mr. Anslinger, who couldn’t come within shouting distance of the truth, was chief apologist for U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy to whom he supplied morphine illegally for years, ostensibly so that the communists would not be able to blackmail McCarthy for his drug dependency weakness and sexual practices.

 

The first step toward prohibition was to introduce the element of fear of the unknown, by using a word that no one had ever heard of before: MARIJUANA. The next step was to keep the prohibition manoeuvrings hidden from the doctors and hemp industries that would have defended hemp, by holding most of the hearings on prohibition in secret. For instance, hemp, the most profitable and desirable crop that could be grown, could have saved our forests as a substitute for all wood pulp paper and fossil fuel. Still can. One acre of hemp can replace 4.1 acres of trees, and it can be grown anywhere. Something that was not to the financial benefit of the Hearst forestry interests.

 

Strangely enough hemp’s growth was allowed in the period of the Second World War, when hemp was badly needed and ‘Hemp for Victory’ was the call that went out to farmers in order to supply the necessary vital coarse fibres of the plant for war use. This was in complete contrast to hemp having been outlawed four years earlier as the ‘Assassin of Youth’. After the war it became illegal again because it could also produce marijuana.

 

Finally, in order to stir up primal emotions and tap right into an existing pool of racial hatred that was already poisoning society in the 1930’s, Negroes and entertainers and their jazz and swing music were declared to be the outgrowth of marijuana use.

 

Hemp thus became a much-maligned plant in these modern times when a lot of it went up in smoke.

 

If you want to go back to much earlier times:

 

Cannabis related knowledge, like having a different faith, was branded a ‘sin’ by the Roman Catholic Church’s 500 year Inquisition from the 11th to the 17th centuries. Many people suffered but others profited handsomely. The Pope could declare anything to be ‘heresy’, and use it as an excuse to legally rob, torture or kill his enemies or anyone else that was accused of ‘sin’. For over 200 years inquisitors divided up the property forfeited to them by suspected heretics. Whoever denounced you got one-third of your property, one-third went to the government and one-third went to the Papacy.

 

Some of this sounds familiar to the content of the new legislation proposed by Harper’s conservative government and it’s mandatory sentencing.

 

Cannabis is the ideal social lubricant, something to do instead of drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes, something to share with people and bond people. Experts believe cannabis can have positive health and physiological effects. Any recreational use would never come close to matching the harm done by alcohol or cigarettes. There is often aggressive, violent behaviour after heavy drinking, much more than you are likely to see after smoking a lot of pot. The pot user is more likely to become rather placid, produce a sense of easier communication with other people, and everything seems more amusing. Habitual users of pot may not become any smarter, but all the alcoholics I ever knew are now dead.

 

Make comments about this article in The Canadian Blog.

 

About the writer:

 

Hal Sisson, Q.C., R.C.A.F. armourer in World War II, is a reformed lawyer who practiced law in Peace River, Alberta for thirty-five years and has been resident in Victoria, B.C. since 1985. Author of ten published books including the best selling Coots, Codgers and Curmudgeons (with his partner Justice Dwayne Rowe); and his latest 'Modus Operandi 9/11' that exposes the White House lies about 9/11, the machinations of the New World Order and the "War on Terror", and does so featuring salty humour in the form of a novel. International croquet and marble player and collector, his major hobby was stand-up comedy and writing and performing in Western Canada's longest running (25 years) burlesque revue, 'Sorry 'Bout That'.

 

source .... The Canadian