FORGET FACTS, COMMON SENSE OR DECENCY

There's been quite a kerfuffle on the letters page recently on the
legalization of marijuana.

That we're still even debating this issue, some 70 years after weed's
defacto criminalization, is astounding. Every reputable government
study, independent study and report out there has stated,
unequivocably and for decades, that pot is marginally harmful and
shouldn't be a criminal matter.

And yet governments, driven on by the overzealous and the
international joint convention on narcotics continue to waste billions
of dollars and jail innocuous, harmless potheads, despite zero
evidence the war on drugs has done anything to restrict access,
improve public safety of unburden health care.

In point of fact, weed is so common -- with a third of all Canadians
admitting to having smoked it and nearly 60% thinking it should be
decriminalized, that it has become the primary drug war focus by
default; for every hard drugs dealer that goes down, police bust a
handful of grow-ops, because they're everywhere.

Government allows this to continue despite repeated statements from
the courts that there is little to no evidence backing it. But because
most people aren't affected by it and don't get involved in the
debate, a few hard-liners are easily co-erced as a result into
supporting its position by the lure of the "easy answer."

There is no easy answer to vice. There is no (humane, civil)
punishment that can deter people from enjoying things that are bad for
them (and if smoked, as most do, marijuana is exceedingly bad for your
lungs).

But various government commissions from the U.S. and Canada --
including exhaustive investigations by the Shafer Commission under
U.S. president Richard Nixon and the Le Dain Commission under Prime
Minister Pierre Trudeau -- have support legalizing or decriminalizing
marijuana in 1894, 1926, 1930, 1937, 1944, 1961, 1970, 1972, 1973,
1977, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1989, 1994, 1996 and 2000.

That's 17 major commission reports conclusively demonstrating in the
last century that pot is relatively harmless, without even counting
innumerable similar policy papers from foreign governments and medical
experts. And yet, politicians ignore the facts while police officers,
many of whom have been utterly brainwashed by years of nonsense from
their superiors, continue to fight what they've been taught is a good
fight.

It's gotten so ridiculous that a splinter organization called Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition -- which includes some of the former
top cops of major cities, like Seattle's chief of 34 years, Norm
Stamper -- has thousands of members around the globe, all of whom see
the futility of their efforts on pot.

Given that as many as 10 million Americans and close to a million
Canadians a year are arrested, it's not hard to see why.

In the last two decades, a general understanding that there are
clinical benefits to marijuana -- extreme benefits in the case of
multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia sufferers -- has raised the stakes
in the war on weed, which is now also seen as keeping medicine out of
the hands of people who can greatly improve their quality of their
life. Our backhanded attempt at providing medicinal marijuana in
Canada, enforced by Supreme Court rulings, adds to the level of farce

Don't like pot? Don't smoke it. Value your lungs? Don't smoke it. But
if you value science, reason and human civility over government
foolishness, advocate for its decriminalization. Why? Beccause
stupidity IS addictive.