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Law-abiding citizens don’t deserve to be branded as criminals
By Hempology | July 17, 2007
The Interlake Spectator, MB
13 Jul 2007
Marc Zienkiewicz
WAR ON DRUGS GOING TO POT
Canada made headlines the world over this week after the release of a United Nations report that shows Canadians use marijuana at four times the world average — making our country the leader of the industrialized world in cannabis consumption.
What makes the study relevant is not the fact that Canadians smoke more marijuana than anyone else in the industrialized world, but rather that marijuana continues to be illegal despite the fact more people than ever are using it and proving that recreational drug use isn’t the evil bane of society we’re led to believe it is.
Although possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use is either considered a misdemeanor in Canada or else ignored by police altogether, the drug remains banned in a country where the most destructive, harmful drug ever discovered by mankind — alcohol — is perfectly legal and distributed by the government itself.
Most people assume that mariuana and other drugs are illegal for a good, sensible reason, when in fact they’re not. Fact is, illegal drugs actually haven’t been illegal in Canada for very long.
Canada’s current system of drug prohibition began in the early 20th century, when the Opium and Narcotic Act of 1929 became Canada’s main instrument of drug policy.
Opium was one of the first drugs to be outlawed in Canada, made illegal by Parliament in 1908 as a result of growing hysteria and racism over Chinese immigrants, some of whom were recreational users of the drug brought over from Asia.
Prohibition of other drugs followed, and since then, countless lives have been ruined by and billions of taxpayer dollars wasted on the futile enforcement of Canada’s draconian drug laws, while drug use continues to take place as it always has.
Making drugs illegal has done nothing to prevent crime or reduce their use. There’s actually ample evidence out there to suggest drug prohibiton actually increases drug abuse, rather than reducing it.
As Dr. Diane Riley of the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy notes, drug prohibition has led to the illegal drug industry growing to an estimated $400 billion US, “fueling organized crime, corrupting governments, increasing violence and distorting economic markets. In many parts of the world, the war on drugs results in the spread of infections ( e.g. HIV ), violations of human rights, damaged environments and prisons filled with drug offenders convicted of simple possession.”
Valuable police resources are wasted on raiding illegal drug operations that wouldn’t exist if drugs weren’t illegal in the first place, just as American police were forced to waste their time cracking down on bootlegging operations during America’s ill-fated alcohol prohibition of the 1920s.
As historian Andrew Sinclair writes in his book Prohibition: The Era of Excess, alcohol prohibition in America ” transferred $2 billion a year from the hands of brewers, distillers, and shareholders to the hands of murderers, crooks, and illiterates.”
The same has happened in every country where drugs have been outlawed. Drug production and sale has been taken over by gangsters, terrorists, and criminal organizations that have added illegal drug production to their list of other criminal offenses, which often include weapons smuggling and prostitution, to name just a couple.
Newer drugs like crack and crystal meth, which are more addictive and destructive than any other illegal drug ever produced, are a direct result of drug prohibition. Just as alcohol prohibition in America led to the rise of poisonous moonshine, outlawing drugs has directly resulted in the creation and sale of stronger, more potent narcotics.
Canada is no exception to this rule, but all the while, citizens are told by politicians and various special interest groups that drug prohibiton is a good thing.
Without it, the streets would be rampant with crime, we’re told. Our children would be corrupted by drug pushers, and there would be no safe haven from the scourge of the rampant epidemic of drug abuse sure to result if the government dared to legalize such substances.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. As columnist Gwynne Dyer notes in his January opinion piece “The Struggle Against the War on Drugs,” prohibition of recreational drugs has done far more damage to society than drugs themselves ever have.
“But what about the innocent children who will be exposed to these drugs if they become freely available throughout the society? The answer is: nothing [will happen] that doesn’t happen to them now. There is no city and few rural areas in the developed world where you cannot buy any illegal drug known to man within half an hour, for an amount of money that can be raised by any enterprising 14-year-old.,” Dyer writes.
Sadly, none of our politicians have the courage to come out and say what needs to be said.
The U.N. study results show that 16.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 64 smoked marijuana or used another cannabis product in 2006.
Most of these people are otherwise law-abiding citizens who don’t deserve to be branded as criminals for smoking a plant in the privacy of their home.
Dyer estimates that within the next 50 years, drug prohibition as we know it will end.
Let’s hope he’s right.
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