TIME TO SCRAP STUPID POT LAW

Absurd laws require absurd measures to enforce them - a point that
Health Minister Allan Rock underlines with his recent decisions
involving marijuana use.

Even as Crown prosecutors were in court to justify criminal sanctions
against a couple of Canadians for using or selling marijuana, Rock
announced that his department would fund long-term research on the
medical use of the drug.

As well, he granted permission for 14 citizens suffering from various
illnesses to use pot without facing prosecution, although he limited
them to growing their own plants instead of buying pot on the streets.

It will apparently take the federal government at least a year to set
up a government-controlled pot growing operation that can produce,
process and analyse enough marijuana needed for research. It figures
that it would take the government a year to accomplish something that
petty criminals with access to a few seeds and basic hydroponic
equipment can have up and running in a few weeks.

Hundreds of Canadians with illnesses ranging from AIDS to glaucoma to
epilepsy to cancer are using marijuana daily to alleviate medical
symptoms and pain. They buy the drug illegally and risk imprisonment
because they believe it works.

Thousands of Canadians use pot as a recreational drug, convinced, with
reason, that it's less harmful than either tobacco or alcohol, both of
which are sold under government control and profit.

Polls show that a majority of Canadians believe that marijuana should
be legalized. Canada's police chiefs want simple possession of pot
decriminalized.

Even the right-wing think tank, the Fraser Institute, suggests that
current drug laws are absurd because "no one is winning in this war
but the drug dealers. Criminalization allows for the printing of money
by organized crime interests."

It can only be hoped that Rock's move to investigate the medical use
of marijuana will create a body of research that supports what pot
users have maintained all along: that marijuana isn't addictive, toxic
or a gateway to harder drugs; that it doesn't cause violent behavior
or psychosis; that the occasional, recreational use of the drug
doesn't cause people to lose their motivation.

The only proven harmful side-effect of marijuana is its potential to
cause bronchitis in regular users. As lawyer Alan Young told court
last week in the case of his client trying to have pot legalized:

"Parliament has effectively created a criminal law protecting Canada
from becoming a nation of wheezers and coughers."

The unwillingness of parliamentarians such as Rock to revisit an
absurd law, which has its genesis in ignorance and paranoia, had made
criminals out of 600,000 Canadians by 1997 - most of them convicted of
simple possession.

It's time that the government stopped tinkering with the ridiculous
law and scrapped it altogether.