POT REGULATION MAKES SENSE

It's time to take the marijuana trade out of the hands of criminal
gangs so the public can benefit from reduced crime while gaining more
revenue to pay for keeping streets safe.

Last week Mayor John Ruttan declined an invitation to end the war on
pot, through government regulated pot distribution.

The evidence is strong: In 88 years since Canadian parliament started
pot prohibition, it is now used by more people than it ever was when
cannabis tincture was sold in drug stores to treat a myriad of illnesses.

While acknowledging the war on pot is a failure, Ruttan insists
decriminalization will cause drug gangs to expand the sale of harder
drugs. It's not a strong argument for allowing gangs to profit from
selling pot.

If government controlled pot distribution, like it does with
cigarettes and alcohol, home-based marijuana grow operations would
disappear, eliminating the cash source that finances a huge trade in
more dangerous and addictive methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin.

Marijuana is a drug. It may pose a risk of cancer from smoking, it
affects judgement while driving and may cause other little-known
effects. But it's considerably safer than alcohol, which is linked to
crimes, property damage, injury, health effects and death every year.
Yet that drug is legal and distributed by government.

Larry Campbell, Mike Harcourt, Sam Sullivan and Philip Owen want B.C.
municipal leaders to support their call for government control of pot.

Reefer Madness, the laughable propaganda film on marijuana "addiction"
was released in 1936, 13 years after Ottawa MPs voted to illegalize a
plant that had been used mainly for making rope and as a windbreak by
prairie farmers until then.

In the ensuing years, thousands have earned criminal records and jail
sentences simply for using cannabis.

As a growing number of people choose pot to self medicate for a
variety of aches and pains, real or imagined, the war on drugs has
been declared a total and utter failure.

In June, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, with high-ranking
representatives from Canada, Mexico, Brazil and other countries called
for an end on the war on drugs saying it has "clearly failed to
effectively curtail supply or consumption."

Rather than join the call for a sensible approach Ruttan seems out of
step, saying decriminalization will only open the door to more hard
drug production and distribution by the criminal gangs now in the pot business.

That would require a bigger market for the hard drugs, which seems
unlikely, given casual pot users understand the relative risk of pot
versus heroin, and aren't likely to opt for the latter, knowing the danger.

The benefits to government controlled pot sale and distribution are
real and immediate.

Government coffers would get a substantial boost in tax revenues from
the sale of marijuana.

Second, those police resources now given to busting grow-ops could
instead focus on underground stings to catch those selling the hard
drugs that cause real social harm, through addiction that feeds a life
of poverty, crime and violence.

When Ruttan says "a drug is a drug," it's like comparing salad to candy.

Of course pot is a drug, but no two drugs poses the same health risk.
It is wasteful to put so much effort and resources policing a
relatively benign substance.

Certainly, pot needs to be treated with a certain level of respect.
Which is why it should be sold only to adults, in government sealed
packages bearing a warning, just like tobacco.

Government control will reduce the incentive to illegally grow and
sell marijuana.