MAKE POT PAY FOR HEALTH

Last month Langley-Abbotsford Conservative MP Randy White said he had a
list of 80 to 90 people who were convicted cannabis growers who were also
collecting welfare. He said those people should pay, with proceeds going to
drug treatment.

Great idea - pot growers should pay, taxes and business fees as legal
operations. Communities like ours could tap into the billions in revenue
made in the industry and apply those funds to much-needed treatment for
people addicted to alcohol and hard drugs.

The millions saved in police, court and jail costs would be better used for
addiction prevention and treatment, in health care, schools and on our
roads. Pot would be grown in greenhouses, not in basement suites.

It's plain stupid of us to not take advantage of the entrepreneurial power
of cannabis growers - think of the tourist potential in Abbotsford,
attracting Americans with cash to cannabis cafes along the border.

Organized crime would lose a big source of revenue to legitimate operators
as the price would drop and we may even see fewer young men shooting each
other over drug wars.

As more people realize the damage done in the last 80 years by a policy of
prohibition, it's no longer a question of whether that policy will end but
when.

The Canadian government has taken tentative steps toward legalizing grass,
when in Dec. 9, 2002, Justice Minister Martin Cauchon suggested
decriminalizing pot.

Plenty of reasoned government committees have supported decriminalizing
marijuana, including one vice-chaired by White. A 2002 Senate report on
drugs said cannabis prohibition was ineffective and it should be regulated,
like booze. The risks being equal to alcohol or tobacco, the Senate
committee noted, "the main social costs of cannabis are a result of public
policy choices, primarily its continued criminalization, while the
consequences of its use represent a small fraction of the social costs
attributable to the use of illegal drugs."

Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell, former RCMP officer and coroner, wants pot
legal.

"I think we should legalize it, we should tax it to the max and take all
the money that we get from it and put it straight into health care,"
Campbell said. Mere decriminalization would not deter large-scale pot
producers, who will risk arrest despite tougher penalties.

This is not just a crazy West Coast idea.

On April 24, an Ottawa Citizen editorial noted the U.S. commission looking
at Sept. 11 causes found the Federal Bureau of Investigation was "too busy
fighting the never-ending war on drugs," instead of keeping watch on
terrorists. The newspaper wrote: "One of the terrible costs of the war on
drugs is the good that could be done if the money and manpower lavished on
this futile fight were instead devoted to other priorities. Every officer
doing buy-and-busts is an officer not going after thieves, rapists and
murderers."

On a smaller scale the same blindness afflicts us at home. In a March 12
Times article, Mission RCMP Corp. Murray Power said the 3,000-plant
operation they busted days earlier was "the most efficient and effective
operation I've ever seen." Power said chasing down the increasing numbers
of grow-ops was taking police away from other duties.

"General duty officers are getting double the workload and our community is
getting half the service," he said.

Yet recently Abbotsford Coun. Mark Warawa suggested police should crack
down on businesses - legal businesses - that sell greenhouse supplies and
rolling papers.

Prohibition of cannabis creates more crime, not less, yet that's what
Conservative policies would perpetuate.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said knowledge is the antidote to fear. We need to
educate ourselves about the effects of prohibition and question the sanity
of continuing the policy. We need to demand to know how much the "war on
drugs" costs us in Abbotsford.

The war against the hysteria and half-truths that support prohibition is
not a spectator sport.