AGAINST MPS' VIEWS ON POT DECRIMINALIZATION

RE: "MPs say no to decriminalizing pot possession," Innisfail
Province, March 14.

Central Alberta Conservative MPs Myron Thompson and Bob Mills must
have a lot of friends who are drug dealers. Why else would they want
to give them such a huge raise?

History, science, and common sense show us that mandatory minimum
sentences would act as no deterrent, and would drive up the street prices.

This will drive up the dealers' profits, and therefore drive up the
competition, which will inevitably lead to more gun-violence, more
robberies, and more ruined properties.

Even putting more police on the streets will have little to no
effect, since police can catch barely a fifth of the growers and
dealers as it is.

Even if we catch three times as many, there will always be a long
line of guys waiting to fill every one of these vacancies. Why?
Because prohibition makes pot valuable!

There are already more than 600,000 Canadians with criminal records
for drug offences, and the Tories would like to raise that number to
three million.

That will certainly help the contractors who build and maintain prisons.

The Tories also want to continue pressing charges for simple
possession, even on teens.

This will dramatically reduce their ability to get into good schools,
get good jobs, travel, and maximize their earning potential. This
hurts all Canadians.

Then, the taxpayers will have to pay billions more -- every single
year -- to arrest, hold, prosecute, and incarcerate these people in
yet-to-be-built multi-billion-dollar prisons.

Harper's policy will also increase the danger to the estimated one
million Canadians who use marijuana for medical purposes.

Health Canada's fiasco of a Medical Marijuana Licensing program will
likely be shut down, or revamped to make access even more difficult
for these sick and dying Canadians, adding even more strain to our
health care system.

On the other hand, regulating marijuana like alcohol would generate
an estimated $3 billion in annual tax revenue, settle the medical
marijuana issue once and for all, and reduce children's access to marijuana.

It would also offer quality-controls, reduce criminal profits, reduce
gun-violence, and save Canadian taxpayers an additional $2 billion in
annual costs for enforcement, prosecution, home insurance, stolen
hydro, and corrections.

Prohibition is a cancer eating away at our society. It subsidizes
organized crime, corrupts government and police, costs taxpayers a
fortune, is totally ineffective and endangers our children by making
pot more accessible than alcohol or tobacco.

Prohibition is the disease, and regulation is the cure. But with
these rightwing ideologues in Parliament standing in the way of
sensible drug policy, it will likely be a while before we are free of
this cancer.

Taking the marijuana business out of the hands of teens and criminals
and putting it into the hands of responsible adults is Socially
Conservative. Generating tax revenue from that industry is Fiscally
Conservative, and using that money to teach kids why they should
avoid drugs is Morally Conservative.

But this so-called "conservative" government would like to leave
marijuana in the control of gangsters and build several new expensive
jails instead.

The whole thing leads me to wonder just which side of the law these
socalled "Conservatives" are really on.

Russell Barth

Federal Medical Marijuana License Holder

Ottawa, Ontario