WAR ON DRUGS GOING TO POT

Canada made headlines the world over this week after the release of a
United Nations report that shows Canadians use marijuana at four times
the world average -- making our country the leader of the
industrialized world in cannabis consumption.

What makes the study relevant is not the fact that Canadians smoke
more marijuana than anyone else in the industrialized world, but
rather that marijuana continues to be illegal despite the fact more
people than ever are using it and proving that recreational drug use
isn't the evil bane of society we're led to believe it is.

Although possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use is
either considered a misdemeanor in Canada or else ignored by police
altogether, the drug remains banned in a country where the most
destructive, harmful drug ever discovered by mankind -- alcohol -- is
perfectly legal and distributed by the government itself.

Most people assume that mariuana and other drugs are illegal for a
good, sensible reason, when in fact they're not. Fact is, illegal
drugs actually haven't been illegal in Canada for very long.

Canada's current system of drug prohibition began in the early 20th
century, when the Opium and Narcotic Act of 1929 became Canada's main
instrument of drug policy.

Opium was one of the first drugs to be outlawed in Canada, made
illegal by Parliament in 1908 as a result of growing hysteria and
racism over Chinese immigrants, some of whom were recreational users
of the drug brought over from Asia.

Prohibition of other drugs followed, and since then, countless lives
have been ruined by and billions of taxpayer dollars wasted on the
futile enforcement of Canada's draconian drug laws, while drug use
continues to take place as it always has.

Making drugs illegal has done nothing to prevent crime or reduce their
use. There's actually ample evidence out there to suggest drug
prohibiton actually increases drug abuse, rather than reducing it.

As Dr. Diane Riley of the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy notes,
drug prohibition has led to the illegal drug industry growing to an
estimated $400 billion US, "fueling organized crime, corrupting
governments, increasing violence and distorting economic markets. In
many parts of the world, the war on drugs results in the spread of
infections (e.g. HIV), violations of human rights, damaged
environments and prisons filled with drug offenders convicted of
simple possession."

Valuable police resources are wasted on raiding illegal drug
operations that wouldn't exist if drugs weren't illegal in the first
place, just as American police were forced to waste their time
cracking down on bootlegging operations during America's ill-fated
alcohol prohibition of the 1920s.

As historian Andrew Sinclair writes in his book Prohibition: The Era
of Excess, alcohol prohibition in America " transferred $2 billion a
year from the hands of brewers, distillers, and shareholders to the
hands of murderers, crooks, and illiterates."

The same has happened in every country where drugs have been outlawed.
Drug production and sale has been taken over by gangsters, terrorists,
and criminal organizations that have added illegal drug production to
their list of other criminal offenses, which often include weapons
smuggling and prostitution, to name just a couple.

Newer drugs like crack and crystal meth, which are more addictive and
destructive than any other illegal drug ever produced, are a direct
result of drug prohibition. Just as alcohol prohibition in America led
to the rise of poisonous moonshine, outlawing drugs has directly
resulted in the creation and sale of stronger, more potent narcotics.

Canada is no exception to this rule, but all the while, citizens are
told by politicians and various special interest groups that drug
prohibiton is a good thing.

Without it, the streets would be rampant with crime, we're told. Our
children would be corrupted by drug pushers, and there would be no
safe haven from the scourge of the rampant epidemic of drug abuse sure
to result if the government dared to legalize such substances.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. As columnist Gwynne
Dyer notes in his January opinion piece "The Struggle Against the War
on Drugs," prohibition of recreational drugs has done far more damage
to society than drugs themselves ever have.

"But what about the innocent children who will be exposed to these
drugs if they become freely available throughout the society? The
answer is: nothing [will happen] that doesn't happen to them now.
There is no city and few rural areas in the developed world where you
cannot buy any illegal drug known to man within half an hour, for an
amount of money that can be raised by any enterprising 14-year-old.,"
Dyer writes.

Sadly, none of our politicians have the courage to come out and say
what needs to be said.

The U.N. study results show that 16.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to
64 smoked marijuana or used another cannabis product in 2006.

Most of these people are otherwise law-abiding citizens who don't
deserve to be branded as criminals for smoking a plant in the privacy
of their home.

Dyer estimates that within the next 50 years, drug prohibition as we
know it will end.

Let's hope he's right.