cannabisnews.com: Time To Scrap Stupid Pot Law





Time To Scrap Stupid Pot Law
Posted by FoM on October 12, 1999 at 20:40:29 PT
Opinion
Source: Star Phoenix
Absurd laws require absurd measures to enforce them - a point that Health Minister Allan Rock underlines with his recent decisions involving marijuana use.
Even as Crown prosecutors were in court to justify criminal sanctions against a couple of Canadians for using or selling marijuana, Rock announced that his department would fund long-term research on the medical use of the drug.As well, he granted permission for 14 citizens suffering from various illnesses to use pot without facing prosecution, although he limited them to growing their own plants instead of buying pot on the streets.It will apparently take the federal government at least a year to set up a government-controlled pot growing operation that can produce, process and analyse enough marijuana needed for research. It figures that it would take the government a year to accomplish something that petty criminals with access to a few seeds and basic hydroponic equipment can have up and running in a few weeks.Hundreds of Canadians with illnesses ranging from AIDS to glaucoma to epilepsy to cancer are using marijuana daily to alleviate medical symptoms and pain. They buy the drug illegally and risk imprisonment because they believe it works.Thousands of Canadians use pot as a recreational drug, convinced, with reason, that it's less harmful than either tobacco or alcohol, both of which are sold under government control and profit.Polls show that a majority of Canadians believe that marijuana should be legalized. Canada's police chiefs want simple possession of pot decriminalized.Even the right-wing think tank, the Fraser Institute, suggests that current drug laws are absurd because "no one is winning in this war but the drug dealers. Criminalization allows for the printing of money by organized crime interests."It can only be hoped that Rock's move to investigate the medical use of marijuana will create a body of research that supports what pot users have maintained all along: that marijuana isn't addictive, toxic or a gateway to harder drugs; that it doesn't cause violent behavior or psychosis; that the occasional, recreational use of the drug doesn't cause people to lose their motivation.The only proven harmful side-effect of marijuana is its potential to cause bronchitis in regular users. As lawyer Alan Young told court last week in the case of his client trying to have pot legalized:"Parliament has effectively created a criminal law protecting Canada from becoming a nation of wheezers and coughers."The unwillingness of parliamentarians such as Rock to revisit an absurd law, which has its genesis in ignorance and paranoia, had made criminals out of 600,000 Canadians by 1997 - most of them convicted of simple possession.It's time that the government stopped tinkering with the ridiculous law and scrapped it altogether.Saskatoon, SK, CanadaOctober 12, 1999Local time: 21:24:48 PMİ The StarPhoenix Newshawk: HerbRelated Articles:Governments Caught Coming And Going On Marijuana Issue-10/09http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3225.shtml
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