From The Other Side

WHO IS FUELLING THE DEMAND FOR POT?

There are a couple of things about the RCMP grow-op ambush and murders that
are disturbing and need to be said.

First off, I need to make something clear. I am not a pot smoker. I have
never been a pot smoker. I never will be a pot smoker. The closest I have
ever been to being stoned involved painkillers after a head injury, a
separated shoulder, or after having my wisdom teeth chiseled and manually
jackhammered out of my mouth by a sick and cruel dentist.

But don't think I'm going high road on you. I'm not. Weed is just not for
me. I say no, and whether other people do or don't is their business, not
mine. I try not to judge pot smokers.

I have issues with protestors who get stoned and throw bricks and paint at
cops. When I worked in the U.S., some of our best graphic designers and
creative people were fuelled by their daily "4-20". Whatever it takes. So
if you're a recreational user, hey, that's your thing. I was never going to
judge.

But after last week's horrific tragedy in Alberta, my first and initial
reaction was that it was time for all of the recreational users out there
who fuel the demand for this industry to take a good, hard look in the
mirror and ask yourself this one question: Do you have blood on your hands?

So many people reacted in so many ways to these awful murders. I strongly
disagreed with people who tried to use this tragedy as a reason for why
marijuana should be legalized. Would legalizing marijuana end organized
crime's involvement in grow-ops?

No. As long as there is a secondary or black market for marijuana or
anything, there will be organized crime involvement. If it can be sold, it
will be grown or stolen. I believe that because I worked in the trading
card industry for more than a decade and was involved in having people
arrested for forging autographs, theft, fraud and more.

Merchandise was stolen from trucks regularly. Even the trucks were stolen.
Many companies stopped selling to some retail chains - I won't mention any
names but a non-unionized one comes to mind - because internal theft could
not be controlled.

I worked at a hockey card show in Montreal in which the show promoter,
Jean-Guy Pichette, was shot in the middle of a crowded room in front of all
of us and robbed of the money he collected in dealer table fees.

Our industry also saw the remains of a sales executive found in a burned
car. The fact that hockey cards, Pokemon cards, Tiger Woods autographs and
bobble head dolls were decriminalized didn't stop organized crime from
putting its stamp on what should have been a fun and innocent business.

Personally, I don't think marijuana should be legalized. I am terrified of
people getting high and then getting behind the wheel of a car. Our
government has allowed the image of marijuana to become trendy and hip. In
fact, a recent survey in the daily media reported that kids see tobacco as
more dangerous than marijuana.

Most say marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol. But what about taking
both? People are always taking drugs and also having a beer or a drink.
Marijuana has not been presented to young people as a dangerous drug in the
same way tobacco has. Instead, it is cool and accepted.

How surreal is it that peanut butter is seen as more of a threat at our
schools than dope is. This image has fuelled recreational user demand,
because people think they aren't doing anything wrong by smoking up and
it's harmless. The user demand has fuelled the opportunity for grow-ops.

A Toronto police officer said over the weekend that 90 per cent of all
grow-ops are controlled by organized crime. Saying that recreational pot
smokers are fuelling organized crime is less of a stretch than saying that
legalizing pot will end organized crime's involvement in grow-ops.

As it turned out, the killer of the RCMP officers was an evil person who
set up an ambush. He would have killed officers whether pot was legal or
not. It was a terrible tragedy. We should be focusing on the four men
tragically killed and their families and why this demented whackjob killer
was not dealt with earlier rather than fooling ourselves into thinking that
legalizing pot would eliminate drug related violence.

If you smoke pot, you likely disagree with me, and that's okay. I expect
it. Again, I'm not judging you or trying to tell you what's right or wrong
and I'm not trying to convince you to agree with my opinion that pot should
remain illegal. I'm just asking you a simple question, and it's your own
answer to yourself that counts, not what I think. Do you have blood on your
hands?