Marijuana?
Am I the only one who still thinks the War on Drugs is a miserable failure?
I received a petition from Betty Hinton, MP that reads to this effect:
We, the undersigned residents of Canada, draw the attention of the House to the following:
THAT the tragic deaths of four R.C.M.P. officers reinforces our belief that decriminalizing the possession of marijuana will only serve to increase the number of grow operations throughout our country.
THAT the number of Canadian youth using marijuana will increase throughout our country.
THAT the use of marijuana damages the health and well being of our citizens.
THAT the decriminalization of possession of marijuana signals to the criminal element that Canada is open for business and soft on crime.
THEREFORE, your petitioners call upon Parliament to withdraw Bill C-17 and any legislation designed to decriminalize the possession and use of marijuana, provide increased funding to the R.C.M.P. and Canadian police forces to ensure the elimination of marijuana grow operations, impose a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in a federal penitentiary, without parole eligibility, for convicted grow operation owners, and finance this initiative by re-directing the funding of the ineffective $2 billion long-gun registry into a program to eliminate grow-ops in Canada.
Don’t accuse me of being insensitive to the deaths of the officers. However, if prohibition of marijuana wasn’t around in the first place, then they would be alive today.
Rather than imposing tougher penalties, I believe the strongest action to end organized crime in this area would be to legalize and regulate marijuana, much as we do now with alcoholic beverages. This action would seriously hurt organized crime, and free up substantial police resources to fight the remaining areas where they operate (i.e. illegal gun trade, human slavery, etc.). Additional resources could also be directed toward fighting crime from taxes collected on marijuana sales.
I agree with Hinton on one point. I am opposed to decriminalization. Decriminalization does nothing to remove the criminal element from the industry. While it would result in fewer criminal records, it certainly doesn’t go to the root of the problem. As long as growing and distributing marijuana remains a crime, people who buy marijuana will be buying it from criminals.
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Jarrett
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