Pubdate: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 Source: Tri-City News (Port Coquitlam, CN BC) Copyright: 2011 Tri-City News Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/3X3xlf9Y Website: http://www.tricitynews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1239 Authors: Andy Radia and Jim Nelson Note: Andy Radia is a Coquitlam resident and political columnist who writes for Yahoo! Canada News and Vancouver View Magazine. He has been politically active in the Tri-Cities, having been involved with election campaigns at all three levels of government, including running for Coquitlam city council in 2005. Note: Face to Face columnist Jim Nelson is a retired Tri-City teacher and principal who lives in Port Moody. He has contributed a number of columns on education-related issues to The Tri-City News. FACE TO FACE: SHOULD CANADA (PASS THE CHEETOS) LEGALIZE MARIJUANA? It seems my colleague opposite and I both agree that the current laws and regulations that deal with marijuana are not working. The laws, which prohibit cultivation, distribution and use of the drug, have led to high rates of gang violence and huge expenses associated with growing enforcement costs and expensive legal proceedings. Where my colleague and I differ, however, is on how to move forward. My colleague suggests the solution to these problems is decriminalization. While decriminalization is a good first step, it's only a half-step and will not stop the gang violence. According to a recent report commissioned by Stop the Violence BC, incidents of drug market violence are on the rise despite a continent-wide "war on drugs" that has collectively cost North American taxpayers more than $240 trillion over the last 40 years. Neill Franklin, who heads Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, recently told The Province newspaper that the criminalization of pot is the direct cause of most murders in British Columbia. The only solution to alleviate the crime, associated with the pot trade, is to legalize the drug. We need to treat marijuana like we do alcohol and tobacco. Certainly, as police officers and health professionals will tell you, smoking marijuana can have many adverse effects. But there are also adverse effects associated with drinking and smoking, and we don't prohibit booze and tobacco. Instead, we regulate and promote responsible consumption. Legalizing marijuana would allow governments to regulate the growth, production, distribution and possession of the substance. It would also give governments the added benefit of earning tax revenue from its sale. The Fraser Institute pegs the value of Canada's illegal cannabis market at approximately $7 billion annually - at minimum, that could mean upwards of $2 billion in tax revenues for federal and provincial governments. That would mean hundreds of millions of dollars a year to invest in our health care system and hundreds of millions of dollars to promote responsible use of pot. Simply put, prohibition of marijuana has been an abject failure in this country. It's time to put the gangs that make money from weed out of business. - ----------------------------- Legalize marijuana? Now that my Led Zeppelin, Retinal Circus generation is in charge, there is more enthusiasm for this idea from far beyond the Cheetos-munching crowd. While I agree that filling our jails with pot smokers is pointless and that we should immediately stop doing this, it seems to me that legalizing cannabis might be opening a can of Pringles for which we're not prepared. Weeding (sorry) through the reasons for legalizing marijuana, one argument resonates with most of us: Were pot legalized, governments could tax its sale and control its quality and strength. Sounds good. But let's think it through. Who would sell the legalized pot the government would supposedly tax and monitor? Whether sold publicly or privately, we would need assurance that pot sellers paid taxes and that their marijuana met government standards for purity and strength. We would need a cannabis quality control bureaucracy. Pot sellers would need a sales licence and growers a growing licence. We would need a marijuana licensing board. Police would need to sleuth and prosecute unlicensed growers and... wait, I don't like where this is going. We might actually need more laws to legalize marijuana than we currently have prohibiting it. And of course, where one has laws, taxation, licensing and quality control, one has organized crime. The black marketing of pot wouldn't even skip a beat should we legalize it. Criminals would offer tax-free, higher quality pot for cheaper than one could get in the local legal weed shop, thus maintaining or even increasing the attraction of the illicit drug. Let's keep pot smokers and growers out of our jails and get organized crime out of our schools. Don't make marijuana legal; decriminalize it. It's a plant. Stop prosecuting people for possessing or growing it. Let people grow it on their back porch or get it from their cousin's farm in Langley. Unlike alcohol, which takes expertise and equipment to make, marijuana is comparatively easy to produce for oneself. Unfortunately, decriminalizing marijuana wouldn't make the government piles of tax money. It might, however, stand a chance of reducing pot's illicit cachet - the only way to reduce our reliance on organized crime as cannabis suppliers. The answer is within our roach, I mean reach. Let's toke, er, take the easy way out. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.