ONE TOKE SHOULDN'T BE OVER THE LINE

The case for legalizing pot has been made so many times before, it's hardly
worth going over again -- except that Canada seems to be getting quite close
to doing so. The reasons we, as a society, have for keeping marijuana
illegal are considerably more immoral, unethical and discriminatory than we
have for legalizing the use of marijuana (medicinal or otherwise).

Historically speaking, marijuana gained its illicit status because of who
smoked it, not because of any of its pleasure-inducing properties. It isn't
the only drug that suffered such a fate. In Canada, the smoking of opium was
deemed illegal while, curiously, opium could still legally be taken in other
ways. Who smoked opium? The Chinese.

The legal history of marijuana isn't that much different. The laws that
governed the use of marijuana were basically discriminatory.

If you smoke marijuana today you are a criminal, unless you are using it for
medicinal reasons and you have a government-issued card saying so. I don't
know what sort of hoops a person needs to jump through in order to obtain
such a card. And I'm still unclear on how said card-carrying pot smoker gets
his/her supply legally. To the best of my knowledge, the government-operated
marijuana-growing facility has yet to ship out any of its produce.

I guess the card carriers are expected to grow their own stash. There is a
rather pricey refrigerator-sized hydroponic growing device currently for
sale to make the gardening part slightly easier. Still, there's the
getting-the-seed problem. And then learning how to get the stuff to grow.
Not everyone has a green thumb.

It sounds like a lot to ask of a sick person, particularly when the
pharmaceutical companies are happy to market their over-priced,
internal-bleeding-causing, dizziness-causing, nausea-inducing pain killers.

Is it not unethical to allow chronically ill medicinal marijuana users to
risk a criminal record trying to acquire the pain killer they need while we
allow drug companies to continue marketing drugs they know do more harm than
good? Laws have very little to do with what is right or wrong -- especially
consensual crimes, those that affect no one but those willingly engaging in
the act. Smoking pot (or partaking of any other illicit recreational drug
for that matter) is one of many examples of the absurdity of the consensual
crime.

I hear about a marijuana-related crime once a month at the very least.
Considering the number of houses retrofitted into viable indoor marijuana
farms, there must be a huge market for the drug.

So why is pot smoking still a crime? Moral reasons? I'm not convinced. If we
can drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes legally -- both of which cost our
society millions of dollars in health care -- why not marijuana? No
law-maker can justify keeping marijuana illegal on moral grounds. Otherwise
we'd have to make all tobacco and alcohol illegal. Perhaps that isn't a bad
idea, but it won't be done. Too much money would be lost from the system if
we did that. Where are our morals now?

The systems in place that depend upon certain drugs remaining illegal would
incur incredible economic losses. The jails would empty out, a few lawyers
would lose out, and the various police forces would lose out. Perhaps some
of that could be recouped from the revenues gained from legal marijuana
along with some jobs. Tourism might increase.

Canada could be the Holland of North America. This could be done if Canada
has the nerve to make money using the appetite for drugs rather than the
appetite for a war against drugs. Canada needs to decide how many casualties
the war on drugs really leaves versus the other more humane (if somewhat
"immoral") choice of giving up the war altogether.