Pubdate: Thu, 26 May 2016
Source: St. Thomas Times-Journal (CN ON)
Page: 7
Copyright: 2016 Sun Media
Contact: http://www.stthomastimesjournal.com/letters
Website: http://www.stthomastimesjournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/953
Author: David Akin

NDP'S RIGHT: LITTLE LOGIC IN PURSUING POT POSSESSION CASES

Health Minister Jane Philpott stood before the United Nations last 
month and solemnly vowed that, by the spring of next year, marijuana 
use would be legal and tightly regulated in Canada.

Notably, she said: "We know it is impossible to arrest our way out of 
this problem."

And yet, if the next year is like any other recent year, as many 
60,000 Canadians will be arrested for simple pot possession and, of 
those, about 22,000 will end up with criminal records.

To put that in perspective, a police officer in this country is 
dealing with a pot possession incident once every nine minutes.

As the federal NDP have been saying time and again, it just doesn't 
make sense to hang life-changing criminal records on thousands of 
Canadians for an activity that will be legal in a year or so.

"By all means, the government must take the time to craft a 
responsible framework for legalization but do not ask ordinary 
Canadians to keep paying the price," NDP MP Murray Rankin told the 
House of Commons last month.

"Why does the government refuse to take the common-sense step of 
immediately decriminalizing simple possession of marijuana?"

Rankin got his chance to put that very question to Justice Minister 
Jody Wilson Raybould last week at a meeting of the House of Commons 
justice committee. Wilson Raybould, though, didn't have much in the 
way of an answer.

"Our government is committed to the legalization of marijuana and 
strictly regulating access to marijuana. Until such time as marijuana 
is legalized, current laws will continue to apply."

Until then, though, Canada will be, as Philpott told the U.N., trying 
to arrest its way out of a problem. The federal prosecution service 
is expected to spend about $4 million or 3% of its annual budget this 
year on pot possession cases.

"The consequence of that is that kids will still be getting criminal 
records or records that will affect their employment and ability to 
travel and so forth at a time before [the] government gets its 
consultations completed," Rankin said. "Their lives will continue to 
be dramatically affected by something that is perfectly legal a year from now."

And it's not just the NDP that think this makes no sense.

Rankin preceded his questioning of Wilson Raybould last week by 
reading into the record the words of Ontario Superior Court of 
Justice judge Robert Selkirk who, Rankin said, refused in December to 
accept a guilty plea in his court for pot possession:

"You can't have the prime minister announcing it's going to be 
legalized and then stand up and prosecute it. It just can't happen. 
It's a ludicrous situation, ludicrous."

Justice Selkirk, the NDP, the millions of Canadians who support the 
Liberal plan to legalize marijuana, and possibly even health minister 
Philpott see no social benefit to continuing to arrest and prosecute 
those with a few grams of pot on them.

There ought to be a better way.
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