THE LIBERALS SHOULD SCRAP NEW MARIJUANA LAW

VANCOUVER - Justice Minister Irwin Cotler laid an egg by resurrecting
the old Liberal government's marijuana decriminalization bill.

This legislation will do the opposite of what Mr. Cotler says it will
do.

It will increase enforcement by bringing in a ticketing regime for
small amounts of marijuana akin to the current collection racket run
by traffic cops.

It will increase policing and jailing costs and the human cost will be
staggering. Imagine -- 14 years in prison if you are caught growing
more than four plants. That's on par with our murder laws and if that
doesn't constitute cruel and unusual punishment for the crime of
horticulture, I don't know what does.

Worse than Mr. Cotler's laziness in not dealing with these issues
(they were pointed out the last time around) is that the government
continues to ignore the real issue of medical marijuana and court
orders to get its house in order. The Office of Cannabis Medical
Access, which co-ordinates initiatives related to providing a reliable
Canadian source of medical marijuana, is a monumental failure by any
measurable standard except futility.

The program to register medical users is in such chaos, is so
expensive and is so inefficient, compassion clubs called earlier this
year on the auditor general to investigate malfeasance and bumbling
not unlike the gun registry.

Believe it or not, only 800 Canadians have managed to get an exemption
issued by the office after nearly five years of operation. These are
AIDS and chemo-therapy patients who find marijuana relieves their
pain, nausea and other symptoms.

I've had three friends go through the chemo and each found
pharmaceutical anti-nausea drugs did not do the job that a toke would.

When my mum went through the regime last year, a bag of B.C. Bud was
the first thing on my shopping list for her.

There are 7,000 people across the country currently getting their
medicine through compassion clubs because the federal government is
failing them. Vancouver's compassion club has a membership of roughly
2,000 people. But in all those communities where there are no such
organizations .... well, I guess the government is driving them into
the arms of Mom Boucher's Boys.

Research figures indicate there are more than 290,000 medical users in
B.C. alone, a million across the country. Even if a much higher number
of these people could negotiate the bureaucracy and get registered for
an exemption, the government marijuana is so bad many people can't
smoke it.

Grown on a $5.7-million contract in a mine shaft, the marijuana
initially had too little THC to be effective; now that the company has
fixed that problem, it's too badly ground up to smoke.

Of the roughly 100 exemptees who have received government marijuana
($57,000 for each of them!), as of March 31, 2004, roughly 30 per cent
had returned it due to its poor quality. One patient said it "wasn't
fit for human consumption." In spite of allocating $7.5 million to
medical marijuana research in 1999, the feds saw to it that only two
proposals were accepted: one in Toronto that has gone defunct after
$800,000 vanished, and the second in Montreal, still in the recruiting
stage.

Meanwhile, all of these Canadians are forced into the black market at
a time when the government wants to make the penalties for getting
caught there draconian. Earlier this spring, Victoria police raided
that city's compassion club growing operation, depriving medical users
there of an organic supply and forcing them to buy on the corner.

Last time the cops did this, they busted the club's founder, Philippe
Lucas. This is what Victoria Judge Robert Higinbotham wrote in 2000 in
dismissing the charges: "Mr. Lucas enhanced other people's lives at
minimal or no risk to society. He provided that which the government
was unable to provide: a safe and high-quality supply of marijuana to
those needing it for medicinal purposes."

Under the new law, anyone growing a patch of marijuana for the sick
and the dying will now face a longer term of imprisonment than violent
house invaders and most killers.

That's nuts.

Simon Fraser University economics professor Stephen Easton, who has
researched the booming growth of the marijuana industry for the Fraser
Institute, believes politicians are making the same mistake today they
did in the Roaring Twenties by trying to maintain Prohibition. He says
it's time to legalize marijuana and tax it:

"Alcohol prohibition in the U.S.expanded organized crime in North
America. Removing alcohol prohibition generated many problems, but
none like those afflicting society in the days of Al Capone and his
ilk. Removing the prohibition on marijuana production would permit
society to replace today's give of revenue to organized crime with (at
the very least) an additional source of revenue for government coffers."

The criminal law is no longer an appropriate or useful tool for
regulating marijuana in our society.

There are better ways, there are more economical ways and there are
more compassionate ways than this bill.

Mr. Cotler and cabinet should go back to the drafting table and deal
with the real issues here.