cannabisnews.com: Taking The High Road





Taking The High Road
Posted by CN Staff on September 05, 2002 at 07:36:47 PT
By William Johnson 
Source: Globe and Mail 
Canada is on the map. Yesterday's luminous but explosive report of the Senate committee on illegal drugs will be heard like a cannon shot across the world.In a unanimous judgment, nine experienced senators told Canadians that cannabis (a.k.a. hemp, pot, hashish, marijuana) should be made legal in this country and that it should be readily purchasable by all Canadian residents over 16, who would also be authorized to cultivate it for their personal use.
Commercial cultivation and distribution to the public would be authorized under licence, according to conditions set by federal, provincial and municipal governments.Moreover, an amnesty should be declared for all who've been convicted of simple possession. Pending charges for possession would be dropped. Those in prison would be freed. The estimated 600,000 Canadians who now carry a criminal record for possession would have their slates wiped clean.These recommendations, if enacted, would make Canada the only civilized country on Earth to rescind entirely the legal prohibition against marijuana. Other countries, including the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland and Australia, have instituted regimes of tolerating what is still illegal, or reducing penalties to the level of minor infractions. But none has placed cannabis in a category similar to that of alcohol.The senators concluded that a regime of "tolerance" would merely institutionalize hypocrisy. It wouldn't end control of production and distribution by criminal gangs; it wouldn't enforce standards of safety or limit the strength of the psychotropic ingredient. The senators recommend a maximum THC content of 13 per cent for recreational use, but no limit for therapeutic use.Their report, in five volumes, is almost certainly the most comprehensive survey of available knowledge on cannabis, including history, law, epidemiology, pharmacology and international comparisons.Two sets of statistics were particularly interesting. Research in Canada indicates that, in the previous year, 10 per cent of Canadians over 18 have tried cannabis. But, among those 12 to 17, the proportion was 40 per cent -- four times as high, for an estimated one million youngsters. Marijuana is the drug primarily of teenies.Second interesting figure: More than 25,000 charges for possession of cannabis are laid each year. Enforcing the prohibition costs Canada -- in policing, courts and prisons -- an estimated $1-billion. Couldn't that money be better spent, say, in complying with the Kyoto Protocol?The report will challenge governments, enlighten open-minded politicians and the public, send some pious souls scuttling for holy water to sprinkle on Satan's own weed, and surely unhinge police crusaders for prohibition. What cautionary ghost stories will they now tell the youngsters when they go into the schools to scare them (ineffectually) from trying pot?It was 32 years ago that another body, the Le Dain commission, did a thorough investigation and recommended: "No one should be liable to imprisonment for simple possession of a psychotropic drug for non-medical purposes." That wise counsel remained a dead letter because timorous politicians feared that their superstitious constituents would turn against them if they decriminalized pot.Will we have the wisdom, at last, to exorcise our Canadian version of the Inquisition? The Senate, when it votes on this report, must put its full moral authority behind its recommendations. And let the House of Commons, in a free vote, lead the world toward a new age of enlightenment on drugs. Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)Author: William JohnsonPublished: Thursday, September 5, 2002 – Print Edition, Page A19Copyright: 2002 The Globe and Mail CompanyContact: letters globeandmail.caWebsite: http://www.globeandmail.ca/Related Articles:Activists, Experts Hail Senate's Report on Pot http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13995.shtmlSenators Want Pot Legalizedhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13993.shtmlThe Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13987.shtml
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Comment #2 posted by kaptinemo on September 05, 2002 at 08:27:16 PT:
The forge is fired, the metal glowing
the avil is ready; will Canadians have the strength to lift the hammer and smash the chains, once and for all?This is not being over-the-top melodramatic, here: The fate of freedom around the world is dependent upon a handful of people in the Canadian government. Because a vote for legalization in the Canadian Supreme Court will be the death-knell of cannabis prohibition around the world. Like a mortally wounded snake, it may writhe about afterwards and still bite the unwary, but its' days are numbered. Such a vote will be the most stinging possible rebuke of the Canadian nation - not a municiplaity, not a Province, but the Canadian nation - towards overweening and unwarranted American political and legal influences. And all that that entails.It says, in as clear a term as possible, that Canada will not be to the US as tiny, progressive, democratic Finland was so wrongfully forced to be vis-a-vis the Soviet regime.When you think of it, it's always come down to that. Just a few. Who, when pressured on all sides, must instead listen to their 'better angels of their nature' and do the right thing. Oftentimes, far too often in history, such people fail to do so...and we are cursed with darkness and evil. As we have been for 6 decades.When the Canadian Supreme Court votes, the members of it will be doing a lot more than just raising their hands. If they vote for legalization, they are swinging that hammer down on chains made brittle by the work of people like you, dear readers. If I were a Canuck, I'd be justifiably proud, right now. But will you Canux follow through? This truly is 'make or break'...and many of us will not be around much longer. I remember the 'false dawn' of cannabis law reform during the late 1970's; I pray I will see the true dawn before I die.
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Comment #1 posted by druid on September 05, 2002 at 08:22:27 PT:
WOW
I just love that last paragraph :)
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