DRUG USE MEDICAL ISSUE, NOT CRIMINAL: GREEN PARTY

Federal Green Party deputy leader Adriane Carr hopes that the end of
the United Nations Beyond 2008 conference in Vancouver yesterday will
offer lessons for Canadian drug policy.

"What is clear to me is that the track we are on is wrong," Carr
said. "We need to redirect our resources away from punishing people
and toward treating them for what is a medical, not a criminal,
issue. The war on drugs has been costly, ineffective and simply bad policy."

Carr said that the Green Party is supporting delegates to the two-day
conference who advocate the regulation and taxation of marijuana.