Pubdate: Mon, 13 May 2002
Source: Nelson Daily News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2002 Nelson Daily News
Contact:  http://www.nelsondailynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/288
Author: Hubert Beyer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmjcn.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal - Canada)

GOVERNMENT POT PROJECT GOES BUST

VICTORIA - If ever there was proof that government shouldn't be in 
business, the spectacular failure of the federal medical marijuana 
grow program is it.

The stuff the feds have been growing inside an abandoned copper mine 
near Flin Flon, Manitoba, couldn't give you a buzz if you smoked your 
brains out.

Last year, then Health Minister Allan Rock announced a new program to 
provide chronic pain sufferers and terminally ill patients with the 
right to legally smoke marijuana.

The issue had been forced by an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that 
told Ottawa to either change its regulations for the medical use of 
marijuana or the court would strike down the country's illicit drug 
laws. Do something or get off the pot, you might say.

So what does Ottawa do? Create a massive bureaucracy, load it up with 
tons of red tape, find a location more suited to the storage of 
nuclear waste than the growth of pot, look for seeds and start 
growing the stuff.

Turns out the seeds they got from police raids on grow-ops around the 
country didn't do the trick. The first crop that was to have been 
ready for distribution several months ago consisted of about 185 
different varieties. It was declared useless.

All the government had to do was send someone up to Tofino, where 
some of the world's most potent pot is grown, to get a supply of 
seeds. An alternative would have been to place on order with High 
Times Magazine. You can actually order the seeds on the Net. Any 
strain your heart desires - Big Bud, Northern Light, Dutch Passion.

B.C. marijuana is known to pot smokers the world over as the best 
there is. Yet, our government can't get a decent crop to head off 
court action that might strike down any law forbidding the growth, 
distribution and possession of marijuana.

The easiest way out for the government would have been to allow 
Victoria-Esquimalt MP  Keith Martin's private members bill proceed to 
the Commons for debate and approval. Martin's bill called for the 
decriminalization of marijuana.

But common sense is not what the Liberal-dominated Commons is known 
for, so the Liberals killed the bill, throwing two years of work on 
the trash heap.

A law that can't be or isn't enforced is a bad law and should be 
scrapped. The law prohibiting possession of marijuana is a bad law 
because it isn't enforced anymore. Like a police officer said 
recently it is damned near impossible to get busted for possession of 
pot in Vancouver.

Smoking is more tightly regulated these days than the possession of 
pot, and tobacco smokers are subject to greater harassment than pot 
smokers.

The marijuana issue was originally brought to a head by Terry Parker, 
whose court case forced the government into growing marijuana in the 
first place. Parker went back to court recently because he was unable 
to get what the court said he was entitled to and received a personal 
exemption.

Meanwhile, because Ottawa is still sitting on the pot, some  255 
users have been licenced to grow marijuana, and 164 of them are 
permitted to smoke what they grow. Seems the private sector is way 
ahead of the public one.

Also, people who want marijuana for medical purposes can easily get 
their hands on it, provided they get a certificate from their doctor. 
With that certificate, they can buy pot in certain stores, at least 
in Vancouver and Victoria. The process is not legal, but police lose 
no sleep over it and the courts wouldn't either.

And while Ottawa tries in vain to produce a decent crop of pot in its 
Flin Flon bunker and the war on smokers heats up, liquor laws are 
being relaxed all over the country because there's big money for the 
government in the sale of alcohol.

Yet nobody's ever become violent from smoking pot, the cult film 
classic Reefer Madness notwithstanding, while a great deal of human 
misery can be attributed to alcohol.

It all doesn't make much sense, but that's government for you. Of the 
three products in question, booze, tobacco and pot, two are widely 
considered dangerous to our health. The government makes fortunes on 
the sale of both those products, but leaves the users of one alone, 
while declaring open season on users of the other.

Marijuana, on the other hand, widely regarded as harmless and not 
contributing a cent to government revenues, is illegal, but Ottawa is 
trying to grow it.

Makes the Madhatter's Tea party look like a philosophers' convention.
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MAP posted-by: Josh