Canada has been terrified of liberalizing our drug laws for fear of angering Uncle Sam. Ironically, the United States is now closer to legalizing pot than we are.

While the federal Conservatives in the Great White North are poised to bring in mandatory jail time for producing and selling illicit drugs, the sweet smell of drug reform is wafting across America. Wouldn’t that be a weird buzz? Canada as the uptight, anti-pot zealot and America as the laid-back, rational progressive.

In some states, the simple possession of marijuana has been effectively decriminalized (although more than 800,000 Americans were still arrested for pot possession last year). And in Alaska, possession of a small amount of weed in your own home is legal.

Thirteen states allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes. And a California legislator has introduced a bill to legalize the adult use of pot. He proposes a $50-an-ounce tax which would bring in an estimated $1.3 billion for the state, which has a staggering multibillion-dollar deficit.

Last week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged that it’s time to debate whether to legalize and tax marijuana.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the Conservatives’ proposed amendments include a mandatory six-month jail sentence for growing even one pot plant for the purpose of trafficking.

And our medical pot regulations are so complex — thanks to the constant tug of war between the government and the courts over how the scheme should be run — that no one really has a clue how it’s supposed to work.

Head to the rec room

It’s enough to make you want to head to the rec room to partake in the consciousness-altering substance of your choice.

A number of factors have converged to prompt the U.S. to seriously consider drug reform, says Bruce Mirken, of the U.S. Marijuana Policy Project, which advocates the legalization and regulation of pot.

Mainstream figures in politics and the media are talking about it, polls support legalized pot and there’s an increasing realization that Americans’ taste for drugs is fuelling the ultra-violent drug cartels in Mexico.

More than half of Americans surveyed in a recent poll commissioned by the conservative O’Leary Report, for instance, support legal pot.

“This is an issue where, all along, the public has been two or three steps ahead of the politicians,” says Mirken. “The public will basically drag the politicians kicking and screaming into the 21st century.”

The February photo of Olympic swimming dynamo Michael Phelps inhaling from a bong pretty much drew a “collective shrug” from Americans and Kellogg’s attracted more heat over the issue than Phelps because the company dropped his endorsement deal, adds Mirken.

Shifting attitudes

All in all, polling has shown pronounced shifts in public attitudes, he says. “Everybody is up to their eyeballs in budget deficits and there’s this realization that there’s an enormous industry out there that pays no taxes because we’ve indulged in the fantasy that we can just make it go away.”

It’s possible, he figures, that marijuana could be legal in the U.S. within a few years. “We may be near a … tipping point where marijuana prohibition is a bit like the Soviet Empire circa 1987-88,” he says.

“It was actually rotting from inside and it didn’t take very much for the whole structure to collapse.”

Americans seem to be finally admitting the futility of demonizing pot. Canadians? We await saner politicians.

mindy.jacobs@sunmedia.ca
Edmonton Sun

           

I DO think pot should be legalized because marijuana doesn’t kill you, its
the cigarettes. If cigarettes are legal then so should weed because that
nicotine in cigarettes cause people to get cancer and when the doctors don’t reach the cancer in time then the person dies. Cigarettes shouldn’t be legal cause thats the thing killing people not pot. So I think pot should be legalized. Please take my opinion in consideration.
Thank you
Youknowit.com

           

Kristopher Reinertson hit the bull’s-eye with, “Tech Administration Should Retire Zero Tolerance” (CT, Mar. 23). In fact the relatively safe, socially acceptable, God-given plant cannabis (marijuana) should be completely re-legalized.

A beneficial component of re-legalizing cannabis that doesn’t get mentioned is that it will lower hard drug addiction rates. DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) will have to stop brainwashing youth into believing lies, half-truths and propaganda concerning cannabis, which creates grave, future problems.

How many citizens try cannabis and realize it’s not nearly as harmful as they were taught in DARE-type government environments? Then they think other substances must not be so bad either, only to become addicted to deadly drugs. The old lessons make cannabis out to be among the worst substances in the world, even though it’s less addictive than coffee and has never killed a single person.

The federal government even classifies cannabis as a Schedule I substance along with heroin, while methamphetamine and cocaine are only Schedule II substances. For the health and welfare of America’s children and adults, that dangerous and irresponsible message absolutely must change.

Further, regulated cannabis sales would make it so citizens who purchase cannabis would not come into contact with people who often also sell hard drugs, which would lower hard drug addiction rates.

Stan White

Dillon, Colo.
CollegiateTimes.com

           

Steve Lopez visited a former Orange County judge who is not just supporting a bill that would legalize marijuana so that the state could tax it, but he is willing to go on the record to say that the war on drugs is a lost.

I’m sitting in Costa Mesa with a silver-haired gent who once ran for Congress as a Republican and used to lock up drug dealers as a federal prosecutor, a man who served as an Orange County judge for 25 years. And what are we talking about? He’s begging me to tell you we need to legalize drugs in America.

“Please quote me,” says Jim Gray, insisting the war on drugs is hopeless. “What we are doing has failed.”

As far as I can tell, Gray is not off his rocker. He’s not promoting drug use, he says for clarification. Anything but. If he had his way, half the revenue we would generate from taxing and regulating drugs would be plowed back into drug prevention education, and there’d be rehab on demand.

Lopez writes “If Gray had his way, no one under 21 could buy drugs. But anyone older than that could legally buy marijuana — which, he says, causes nowhere near the amount of death and disease as alcohol. The state would need to see how that works, he said, before moving on to legalizing the sale of harder drugs. Sure, he says, legalization might lead to more toking at first, but he believes drug use would wane when it’s no longer forbidden and the novelty wears off.”

So the question is, what do you think? Have we lost the war on drugs? Is it more economical to legalize the weed and tax it? State your case below in the comments and/or vote in the poll here.

– Tony Pierce-  Los Angeles Times