GRAVELY ILL

The Law Is An Ass.

Or at least the ones that impose criminal sanctions for using or
providing marijuana to ease symptoms of illness and disease are.
That's what 93 per cent of Canadians seem to suggest when they say,
as they did in a 2006 Maclean's Magazine poll, that they support the
legal use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Yes, it's true that roughly 1,000 people in this country have
received an exemption that, in abidance with a number of
restrictions, allows them to puff or otherwise administer a daily
dosage of THC while still maintaining their law abiding citizen status.

The respondents to the poll who so clearly see the wisdom of letting
medical patients -- in many cases gravely ill with dehabilitating
disease -- have access to a natural, non-addictive, source of relief
with minimized side effects is clear. They probably believe marijuana
is relatively easily to acquire for someone who, for example, has
AIDS and turns to weed for its ability to fight nausea or bolster the appetite.

But they'd be wrong. Health Canada makes it anything but easy to use
what may just be the best and only remedy for hundreds of thousands.
That's why compassion clubs exist but they do so under shadowy legal
circumstance and without the implicit approval of the state: witness
the recent bust of the Mid-Island Compassion Club.

It serves no useful purpose to blame the police for doing their job.
As the saying goes, cops don't make 'em, they only enforce them. But
the ignorance and waste does bring to mind a question: Why have laws
against drug use at all?

Rather than tie ourselves up in knots deciding what is and isn't a
legitimate use for weed, or indeed any of the so called recreational
drugs, why not consider abolishing the laws against all of them?

It's not as preposterous as it sounds.

Hopefully it's needless to point out the hypocrisy of a society that
will throw one in jail for harvesting a plant with a long history of
rich and varied use quite aside from its intoxicating properties;
while at the same time blithely ignoring, even encouraging, the
rampant abuse of alcohol. Besides, there is but one acceptable reason
to criminalize drugs and that is deterrence.

On that score the laws not only aren't working, they're getting in
the way. Unless we condone handing out life sentences or worse to
those who grow or distribute marijuana, the market will continue to
supply the considerable demand for a substance that provokes little
by way of social disintegration outside of the odd carelessly
discarded candy wrapper. Sure the gangs money and greed create
violence and mayhem but that occurs in relation to the fact it's illegal.

As for the rest, (heroin, cocaine, ecstasy etc.) is it truly our
belief that, given the opportunity, vast additional numbers will turn
to cranking or snorting dangerous psychotropic drugs simply because
there's no law against it? More to the point, why is it anybody's
business in the first place? If society is so sure that any altering
of the mindset is inherently destructive what's with the burgeoning
prescription market for drugs-aimed at treating a host of mental
illnesses-that do exactly that?

The only ones who benefit from an all out assault on drugs are the
lawyers, police, jail guards and other employees tasked with
warehousing and stigmatizing any and all who choose to use. All of it
wasting money that would be better spent on education, social
programs and rehabilitation that might actually reduce use and
mitigate the damage-much of which is caused by the legal sanctions
that place so many in precarious and unpredictable situations in the
first place.

Like prostitution, drugs and their attendant social ills are a
problem that's not about to go away. The odd forward thinking
initiative like Vancouver's safe injection site have proven to be
successful in reducing social harm. Pointed fingers, pious misguided
moralizing and a refusal to accept that drug abuse is a health
problem much more than a criminal issue does less than nothing to
discourage the use of drugs or protect us from its consequences.