NEED HOMEMADE SOLUTION

Take Drug Out Of The Hands Of Untaxed Sources and Put It To Work For The
Canadian People

Re: White House lashes Canada's pot laws, Sept. 17.

We have had decade after decade after decade of enforcing our United
States-fashioned drug laws and waited for the promised results. What do we
have to show for all those years of enforcement and tax dollars? More
Canadians are using marijuana than ever. More Canadians are growing
marijuana than ever. For every grow-op police bust, 10 more spring up, and
even by their own admission, police say they couldn't keep up with all the
marijuana grow-ops springing up if they wanted to.

The real problem with our marijuana laws and the weak and inadequate
Liberal decriminalization bill is our abdication of regulatory control and
tax revenue from marijuana. In the face of bold new evidence and reports
from the Senate , the Fraser Institute and recent Statistics Canada
figures, it is time Canadian legislators turned their ear away from the
needs of the White House and toward what is best for the Canadian people.

While the Canadian government reaps profit in the millions off
intoxicating, addictive, and more harmful substances like alcohol and
tobacco, it still has not come to the conclusion that millions of other
Canadians already have: We should take marijuana out of the hands of
untaxed sources and put it to work for the Canadian people and adopt the
same approach we use with tobacco and alcohol. Regulation would allow us to
keep marijuana out of the hands of children using the tools to restrict
sales to minors. Our current approach clearly has not worked.

In 2002 a Senate committee unanimously concluded Canada should regulate and
tax marijuana, treat it as a public health issue and not a criminal issue,
and that marijuana is significantly less harmful than alcohol or tobacco.

A recent Statistics Canada study revealed that more than 10 million
Canadians have used marijuana in their lifetimes and that more than 3
million Canadians regularly use marijuana. With numbers such as these we
simply cannot afford to continue to take damaging domestic policy
recommendations from the United States. With the evidence that Canada is a
small-time supplier of marijuana to the U.S., it is curious indeed why the
White House continues to take such an active interest in Canadian marijuana
laws.

The majority of Canadians want a made-in-Canada solution to our marijuana
laws and do not want to see us continue or worsen a regime which continues
to funnel billions of untaxed dollars into the ether. The longer we ignore
this growing green elephant in the room, the more taxes Canadians will pay,
the more Canadian law enforcement resources will be wasted on a futile U.S.
"War on Drugs" that even Canadian police admit they have lost and cannot
win, and the billions of dollars annually in untaxed revenue handed to
organized crime.

As Parliament returns in a minority government situation, I would strongly
urge all legislators to take advantage of this opportunity to pass a strong
piece of legislation that would legalize marijuana and stop encouraging the
illicit sale and production of marijuana in Canada.

Jody Pressman, Executive Director, NORML Canada, Ottawa