Pubdate: Sun, 04 Aug 2002 Source: Halifax Herald (CN NS) Copyright: 2002 The Halifax Herald Limited Contact: http://www.herald.ns.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/180 Author: Silver Donald Cameron Note: Silver Donald Cameron is an award-winning author living in D'Escousse. Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion) WHOSE ADDICTION? Martin Cauchon Finally Brings A Sense Of Reality To Debate Over Marijuana. Now How About Gambling? Justice minister Martin Cauchon has smoked marijuana, and unlike Bill Clinton, it appears he inhaled. "I'm 39 years old," he told the CBC, "and, yes, of course I tried it before, I mean obviously." Imagine that: a politician who admits he behaves like normal people. And he's also talking sense about grass. Thirty thousand Canadians were arrested for possession of marijuana in 2000. Most of them were otherwise law-abiding citizens who got criminal records for doing something which was really their own damn business in the first place. The cost of churning these folks through the justice system is enormous. Cauchon thinks it may be time to decriminalize grass and stop wasting resources on this non-problem. Yes indeed: long past time, in fact. It's obvious by now that marijuana is a well-established feature of Canadian life. Remarkably, however, all our elected officials have posed as members of that prissy minority of people under 70 who haven't ever taken a puff when a joint was passed around at a party. To a man (and a woman) our legislators have represented themselves as hermits and goody-goodys, without an ounce of curiosity or adventurousness. Jean Chretien says he's never tried marijuana. I wish I could believe he was lying. I'm afraid he may be telling the truth. Committees of both the House and the Senate are now considering the drug issue, and have found no real evidence that marijuana leads to harder drugs. That's because it doesn't, as the federal government's LeDain Committee concluded about 30 years ago. For many of us, the use of grass doesn't even lead to the use of more grass. Those who like it, however, testify that it leads to rumination, music appreciation, hot sex and warm smiles, none of which seems like a major problem for the nation. It's probably not healthy to smoke a lot of dope - or anything else - over a long period of time. But dopers and smokers (and other addicts, for that matter) have the right to go to hell in their own ways. The police, of course, have their own drug addiction. Thirty thousand arrests will justify a lot of police jobs, and a hefty piece of the fuzz budget. However. Canada does have three truly important addiction problems: alcohol, tobacco and gambling. They're all legal, and in all three the government is a major beneficiary. With gambling, government is the pusher. I recently saw a TV interview with a prison inmate - a plump, pleasant-looking woman in her forties who had spent 20 years in the military. "I sat down at the poker machines," she said, "and when I got up I was $200,000 poorer and 80 pounds heavier." After losing her health and her life's savings, she was suicidal. She tried to "hold up" a convenience store with a toy gun, hoping that a policeman would shoot her. No such luck. Instead the police arrested her and sent her to prison in Truro. She was interviewed for a show about a dog-training program for prisoners. Nobody commented on the reason she was in prison - her gambling addiction, which had rampaged through her life like a rogue elephant. Last year, the Province of Nova Scotia took in more than $178 million from gambling, $4 million more than the previous year. Of this, $158 million came lottery tickets and video lottery terminals. Every year, the casino in Sydney sucks $30 million out of a traumatized ex-industrial community which desperately needs new businesses and venture capital. Those numbers represent an appalling toll in wrecked lives. Among the worst gambling addicts are the federal and provincial governments, whose sickening promotion of gambling encourages the lie that wealth and success are not earned by character and effort, but by luck. What kind of democracy seeks to corrupt and ruin its own citizens? The public hates these things, particularly the VLTs, but governments won't give them up. In truth, they can't. The mania for cutting taxes, especially corporate taxes, and for paying down the debt, leaves government too poor to pay for essential public services. So it muscles in on gambling, traditionally the territory of small local charities - bingo games to support fire departments and arenas, raffles to buy school equipment. And now the fire departments, community halls and PTAs are in trouble too. Admittedly, there are what might be called "bingo abusers" - people who play bingo every night, travelling from one hall to another, losing substantial amounts of money. But it is impossible to lose at bingo games the ruinous amounts of money people routinely drop in government-sponsored VLTs and casinos. Martin Cauchon, bless him, is right: it's time to stop fretting about marijuana. Wouldn't it be heartening if he and his peers would now take on the far more serious issue of gambling - and of the government's own addiction to it? - --- MAP posted-by: Tom