Are you seriously pretending not to know anything about the politics of drug legalization in Canada?
Just blowing hard to create a breeze? Or reasonably expecting that someone else won't know what you know, and thus might be deceived?
http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/LOP/ResearchPublications/prb0433-e.htm#cunitedCanada's Proposed Decriminalization of Marijuana:
International Implications and Views
Prepared by: <the Library of Parliament Information and Research Service>
17 December 2004
... The reports of the House of Commons and Senate Special Committees in relation to cannabis in 2002 caused some immediate concern in the United States. The Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, John Walters, warned that relaxed marijuana laws would lead to an increase in drug abuse in Canada, stating, “When you weaken the societal sanctions against drug use, you get more drug use. Why? Because drugs are a dangerous addictive substance.” The United States also expressed concern that liberalized marijuana laws in Canada would lead to more drugs crossing into the United States. For example, Colonel Robert Maginnis, a drug policy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush, asserted that the United States would not look kindly on changes to Canadian marijuana laws and warned that it would be forced to take action. He stated, “It creates some law enforcement problems and I think it creates some trade problems and some perception problems, especially in the U.S., with regard to whether Canada is engaged in fighting drug use rather than contributing to drug use” and “We’re going to have to clamp down even stronger on our border if you liberalize and contribute to what we consider a drug tourism problem.”(39)
After Canada introduced its initial marijuana bill in May 2003, John Walters, the U.S. Drug Control Policy Director, warned that if the bill passed, the result would be increased security and lengthy delays at the border.(40) He was quoted as saying, “We don’t want the border with Canada looking like the U.S.-Mexico border,”(41) “You expect your friends to stop the movement of poison toward your neighbourhood” and “We have to be concerned about American citizens … When you make the penalties minimal, you get more drug production, you get more drug crime.”(42) David Murray, special assistant to Mr. Walters, stated that the proposed decriminalization initiative was “a matter we look upon with some concern and some regret” and “We would have no choice but to respond.”(43) Mr. Murray was also quoted as saying, “We have a working partnership that has been mutually beneficial with enormous amounts of trade. Eighty-five percent of Canada’s exports go into the United States. … That trade is mutually beneficial, but we might have to make sacrifices for the integrity of the border on both sides if we recognize that drug trade is hurting us.”(44)
Also in 2003, Asa Hutchinson, Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was quoted as saying, “We don’t want the northern border to be a trafficking route for drugs” and “If countries have divergent policies on drugs, then that increases the potential of the borders becoming a trafficking route.”(45) Will Glaspy, spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, was quoted as saying, “Liberalizing drug laws will lead to an increase in drug use … and drug supplies. They will lead to increased security at the border.”(46)
... In response to Canada’s most recent bill regarding marijuana law reform, Paul Cellucci, the American ambassador to Canada, has commented on Canada’s proposed legislation with the following statements: “Why, when we’re trying to take pressure off the border, would Canada pass a law that would put pressure on the border?” and “If people think it’s easier to get marijuana in Canada, then our people at the border are going to be on the lookout, and I think they will stop more vehicles, particularly vehicles driven by young people, whether they’re citizens of Canada or the United States.”(48)
See also:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/ParlBusiness/Senate/Committees/committee_SenRep.asp?Language=E&Parl=37&Ses=1&comm_id=85CANNABIS :
OUR POSITION FOR A CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY
REPORT OF THE SENATE SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON ILLEGAL DRUGS
SUMMARY
SEPTEMBER 2002
... A regulatory approach to cannabis
The prohibition of cannabis does not bring about the desired reduction in cannabis consumption or problematic use. However, this approach does have a whole series of harmful consequences. Users are marginalized, and over 20,000 Canadians are arrested each year for cannabis possession. Young people in schools no longer enjoy the same constitutional and civil protection of their rights as others. Organized crime benefits from prohibition and the criminalization of cannabis enhances their power and wealth. Society will never be able to stamp out drug use – particularly cannabis use.
... An exemption regime making cannabis available to those over the age of 16 could probably lead to an increase in cannabis use for a certain period. Use rates would then level off as interest wanes and as effective prevention programs are set up. A roller coaster pattern of highs and lows would then follow, as has been the case in most other countries.
... It is for this reason that the Committee recommends that the Government of Canada amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to create a criminal exemption scheme, under which the production and sale of cannabis would be licensed. Licensing and the production and sale of cannabis would be subject to specific conditions, which the Committee has endeavoured to specify. For clarity’s sake, these conditions have been compiled at the end of this section. It should be noted at the outset that the Committee suggests cigarette manufacturers should be prohibited from producing and selling cannabis.
Recommendation 6
The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to create a criminal exemption scheme. This legislation should stipulate the conditions for obtaining licences as well as for producing and selling cannabis; criminal penalties for illegal trafficking and export; and the preservation of criminal penalties for all activities falling outside the scope of the exemption scheme.
Recommendation 7
The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada declare an amnesty for any person convicted of possession of cannabis under current or past legislation.
The government at the time was Liberal and it clearly wanted to decriminalize cannabis. Harper and his right-wing cohort did not take over the government until 2006.
The current Canadian government has also cited UN drug treaties to which Canada is a signatory -- which treat cannabis like a narcotic, as the US demands -- as a bar to Canada legalizing cannabis.
So how about you address your remarks to the source that needs to hear them: your government.
Tell your government to keep its finger out of our pie.
What's entering the US from Canada is pot, not cocaine, not guns. So you shouldn't have any trouble persuading your current administration to sit down and shut up and let us get on with our business.
Not that it will happen at the moment, of course, what with the right-wing toadies in power here at the moment. You blew our chance when we had it. Although even the right-wing toadies might see the wisdom in diverting scarce resources from a ridiculous war on pot in these hard economic times. As I have no doubt they do. But it's ideology über alles, in their case.
You did catch that quote from south of the border up above:
“You expect your friends to stop the movement of poison toward your neighbourhood”
Huh.
I agree. When we're talking about actual poison, of course.
Of course, you don't see the glass half-full, do you? It's a ringing, braggable success of the Canadian gun-control movement that now violent criminals have to scrounge around south of the border to get guns. Always doom and gloom with you.What a cleverly disguised little, uh, less than accurate statement.
I've made my satisfaction with this particular success very obvious in this forum, many, many times. The fact that crimiinals in Canada have to source their guns via hard work and high costs, as a result of our firearms policies, and thus have exponentially fewer of them than yours do, is a terrific thing indeed. I may have said so in this thread even, I'd have to check.
All that's left are professional criminals fighting and killing each other! Just legalize the drugs they sell and the women they rent, and you'll have like six murders per year.Actually, I've never said this -- although your anti-temperance movement colleagues say it frequently when they voice their specious objections to effective regulation of access to firearms.
Prohibition never works, blah blah, yada yada. And I completely fail to take your point anyway. Cannabis should not be legalized, and legalizing cannabis would not have enormous and varied beneficial effects on both sides of the border?
What I have always said is that organized crime will find a way to make money, as it is doing these days with computer/internet based crimes. E-business crime doesn't seem to result in quite the violence that drug trafficking does. White-collar criminals don't seem to amass arsenals of weapons with which to engage in turf wars and the like, or employ/associate with yer common or streetcorner thug. There may actually be lesser evils.
Legalizing actions
that should not be illegal, or at the very least legalizing something where criminalizing it causes more harm than good, is a very different matter from criminalizing actions that cause demonstrable harm to individuals or societies where criminalizing can reasonably be expected to be beneficial. I recall that 18th amendment thing.
As for the rest, I guess we all do our bit, some more than others. I don't drive, I don't patronize fast food outlets or WalMart, I rationalize the travelling that I do, we don't eat great globs of meat (try feeding a diabetic on beans alone), and animals don't have rights, although we do have a duty of care toward them, so I buy free-range eggs. And I vote for a party that I trust most to do the right thing, and I don't try to coerce it into doing things that are on their face immoral, harmful to society and not, er, "liberal".
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
