IT'S TIME TO DECRIMINALIZE MARIJUANA

Editor, The News:

In the 1920s and early '30s, Chicago had Al Capone. Today the Lower
Mainland has the Bacon brothers, only because they are in the news,
but their want-to-be assassins are somehow invisible.

Alcohol - or the "noble experiment," as it was called - was
undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems,
reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve
health and hygiene in America. It was a miserable failure on all
counts. Doesn't it sound familiar? Have we not learned form our past?

I find it ironic that MP Ed Fast will be chairman of the government's
Justice and Human Rights Committee, and the first thing he wants to
bring back is the draconian legislation of Bill C-26.

This bill alters the current drug laws, raising the maximum penalty
for certain offences and introducing mandatory minimum sentences for
others. This is a destructive legislation which will criminalize
ordinary people and ruin lives at the expense of the taxpayer.

Mandatory minimums are a favourite of U.S. law but have never been
attempted for drug laws in Canada.

The U.S. jails are inundated with people on minimum sentences. Many
judges are against mandatory minimums because it strips power away
from the judge to decide a fair sentence or outcome. The power is put
in the hands of the politicians hundreds of miles away who have no
idea of the situation of the crime. You can go to jail for six months
for growing one pot plant for your own use.

Marijuana prohibition has been studied repeatedly by the Canadian
government. In 1972, the Le Dain Commission recommended reforming our
laws and decriminalizing.

Thirty years later, in 2002, the Senate concluded, after two years of
study and hundreds of witnesses, that we should end prohibition
entirely and replace it with a regulated and taxed marketplace.

The Senate Committee said unanimously that marijuana prohibition was
more harmful to Canadians than the use of marijuana. Why are our tax
dollars spent on studies that are not listened to?

The Fraser Institute studied marijuana prohibition and concluded that
it was a "gift of revenue" to organized crime. Criminals are making
billions of dollars tax-free. I would say that is a gift at our expense.

Please say no to Bill C-26 and yes to taxing and regulating marijuana.

Karen Durant

Abbotsford