Pubdate: Thu, 06 Aug 2015
Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB)
Copyright: 2015 Winnipeg Free Press
Contact: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/send_a_letter
Website: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502

LEGALIZE, DON'T PROSECUTE, POT USE

Glenn Allan Price will get his day in court, but does the prosecution
of purveyors of medical marijuana really serve the public interest?
Well, if you're the federal Conservative government, pursuing an
out-of-touch political agenda, clearly it does.

Mr. Price, owner of a recently opened, unlicensed medical marijuana
dispensary on Main Street, was charged by Winnipeg police with
trafficking and possession following a raid Tuesday.

Many speculate an anti-marijuana activist in Vancouver, where
dispensaries have proliferated and are licensed by city council,
triggered the raid with a complaint to the Winnipeg Police Service
earlier this month.

But Health Canada's web page on medical marijuana, complete with a
personal message from Health Minister Rona Ambrose, says the
government will "proactively" pursue all storefronts selling the
substance. (The federal act regulating medical marijuana makes selling
from storefronts, even to those with medical authorization, illegal.)

Having had no luck in pushing local law enforcers in Vancouver to shut
down storefronts there, it appears the federal government found more
sympathy at the WPS.

Mr. Price has made no secret that he will defend his trade in
marijuana in court, and Ottawa evidently replied "game on." This
despite repeatedly losing court challenges to successive laws that
tightly restricted access to medical marijuana, judgments that
underscored the needless frustrations of those suffering from
conditions that can be relieved by smoking or ingesting pot.

But whether this force-of-the-law response to a dispensary (if, in
fact, the store was supplying upon prescription, as Mr. Price
contends) actually makes it to a hearing may depend on the outcome of
the current election campaign on Oct. 19. Liberal Leader Justin
Trudeau has said if elected he would legalize the substance, which the
Tories have warned would result in children falling into the grips of
the evil weed.

Legalization makes the most sense. The evidence is regulation of a
drug that is no worse than alcohol - booze, too, can be manufactured
to varying strengths of alcohol and corrupted by additives to make it
more potent, or potentially lethal - is the better tack.

It allows for good control and for taxation of a recreational
substance, moving it into storefronts and out of the realm of
organized criminals. Neither pot nor booze should be used by the
young, the pregnant or when operating dangerous machinery or motor
vehicles - that's where government public-health campaigns, statutes
and sanctions are most useful.

Most Canadians of an age have grown up in the era of easy access to
pot, their experiences informing them better than an archaic Criminal
Code and its Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which simply reflect
the refusal of a government to move with the times. Past Liberal
governments toyed with the idea of decriminalization, amid a growing
reluctance among prosecutors and judges to slap criminal records on
recreational users. There exists in Canada uneven application of the
law already, as various jurisdictions exert less or more control over
pot sellers and users.

Meanwhile, Canadians suffering from chronic diseases or ailments pot
can alleviate are forced to find a doctor comfortable in prescribing
its use, who will write an authorization that allows them to find a
producer/distributor to mail them their supply. There is one federally
authorized producer in Manitoba. Two in Saskatchewan. One in Alberta.

That's hardly accessibility. That's why people such as Glenn Price,
and the 100 operators in Vancouver, quickly find a market. Supply
falls short of demand. And that's also why street dealers are happy
the Harper Tories remain relentlessly irrational about weed.
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MAP posted-by: Matt