PROHIBITION NOT THE BEST WAY TO CONTROL MARIJUANA USE

Letter writer Geoffrey Capp is right to point out that marijuana use
can be harmful to one's mental health. Moreover, there are several
other defensible reasons that might lead a conscientious citizen to
oppose the use of marijuana.

It is one thing to believe that a decrease in marijuana use would be
good for society. It is another thing entirely to believe that
prohibition is good public policy. To take the leap in logic from the
former to the latter is to assume (a) that prohibition is successful
in significantly lowering the rate of marijuana use and (b) that the
societal benefits of prohibition outweigh the costs.

The evidence for (a) is tenuous at best. According to the UN's World
Drug Report (2007), prohibitionist Canada has far and away the
highest rate of marijuana use in the industrialized world, with 16.8
per cent reporting use within the past year. In the Netherlands,
where marijuana prohibition hasn't been enforced in decades, that
figure is 6.1 per cent.

The question of prohibition's effectiveness is hard to settle, but
some of the costs are quite apparent.

Prohibition robs the government of a predictable stream of tax
revenue and puts that immense profit largely into the hands of violent gangs.

Police are spending an absurd amount of time and resources enforcing
marijuana laws. Meanwhile, they have to contend with gangs that use
marijuana profits to carry out much more dangerous activities.

Furthermore, a number of otherwise innocent people, a
disproportionate number of whom belong to marginalized groups, are
strapped with a criminal record for marijuana possession. The
consequences of that record are drastically disproportionate to the
scale of the offence.

There is also evidence to suggest (as noted by letter writer Wayne
Phillips) that prohibition makes marijuana more desirable and more
accessible to youth. In effect, prohibition increases the rate of use
among the most vulnerable. At the same time, it robs informed adults
of the right to decide what substances they can and cannot consume.
This is no small intrusion of state power into the private lives of citizens.

Alex Masse

Lethbridge