MARIJUANA SHOULD NOT BE CRIMINALIZED

It is hard to understand why Canada criminalizes marijuana. Make it
illegal, sure - subject to a fine, as is wearing a face veil in France
- - but where is the high degree of harm, to others or self, that
requires criminal sanction, including jail?

The criminal law is not meant to be used where a finger wag might
do.

On one level, an Ontario court ruling this week striking down Canada's
marijuana laws was about medicinal users. The law was deemed
unconstitutional because it obliges sick people to obtain a doctor's
approval for use, a procedure that doctors have largely boycotted, on
the advice of their provincial associations and their insurer. Rather
than work with physicians to meet their concerns, Health Canada had
absolved itself of responsibility.

But the question that is impossible to avoid in the thorough,
well-reasoned ruling by Mr. Justice D.J. Taliano, of the Superior
Court, is: Why criminalize?

The Ontario Court of Appeal has previously accepted that marijuana
consumption is "relatively harmless," compared with hard drugs,
tobacco or alcohol; that there is no hard evidence of irreversible
organic or mental damage; that no evidence shows cannabis induces
psychoses; that cannabis is not addictive; that marijuana use doesn't
cause criminality, doesn't make people more aggressive or violent, and
probably doesn't lead to hard drug use; that there have been no
recorded deaths from marijuana consumption; that it does not cause a
"motivational syndrome"; and that, where the drug is decriminalized,
consumption doesn't increase wildly.

The constitutional issue is easy to understand. The state's marijuana
ban aims to protect people from harm, yet the ban imposes harm on sick
people. Judge Taliano heard from would-be medical users from across
Canada that it was nearly impossible to find a doctor who would sign
off on marijuana use. These would-be users included people with
multiple sclerosis and HIV-AIDS. It is not as if the alternative,
prescription opioids, is perfectly wonderful. Those drugs are involved
in more overdose deaths in North America than cocaine or heroine.

The federal government has been given three months to fix the
marijuana law for medicinal users or that law will fall by the
wayside. Separately, the Conservatives want a mandatory minimum of six
months in jail for people who grow six marijuana plants. How about a
debate on the decriminalization of marijuana?