Pot Growers No Worse Than Martini Drinkers

[boulder]

One of B.C.'s most senior appeal court judges says she no longer believes marijuana offences are serious crimes. "While at one time I accepted the received wisdom that marijuana offences were serious crimes, I now am of a different opinion," B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Mary Southin said in a written judgment released Friday.

 

"In my years on the bench I have sat on over 40 cases which had something to do with this substance, which appears to be of no greater danger to society than alcohol," she said.

 

Her comments were contained in a unanimous written ruling by a three-judge panel that overturned a lower court decision to convict a Vancouver couple of operating a marijuana growing operation.

 

"I have not yet abandoned my conviction that Parliament has a constitutional right to be hoodwinked, as it was in the 1920s and 1930s by the propaganda against marijuana, and to remain hoodwinked," she said in the judgment.

 

"The growing, trafficking in, and possession of marijuana ... is the source of much work, not only for peace officers but also for lawyers and judges. Whether that work contributes to peace, order and good government is another matter."

 

Southin said the marijuana laws in Canada and the U.S. have made "criminals of those who are no better or worse, morally or physically, than people who like a martini."

 

And she went on to cite the anti-marijuana propaganda in the 1936 American film, Reefer Madness, which claimed that pot was "the new drug menace which is destroying the youth of America in alarmingly increasing numbers."

 

Source: Vancouver Sun