Pubdate: Tue, 09 Jan 2007
Source: Parksville Qualicum Beach News (CN BC)
Copyright: 2007 Parksville Qualicum Beach News
Contact:  http://www.pqbnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1361
Author: Fred Davies

GRAVELY ILL

The Law Is An Ass.

Or at least the ones that impose criminal sanctions for using or 
providing marijuana to ease symptoms of illness and disease are. 
That's what 93 per cent of Canadians seem to suggest when they say, 
as they did in a 2006 Maclean's Magazine poll, that they support the 
legal use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Yes, it's true that roughly 1,000 people in this country have 
received an exemption that, in abidance with a number of 
restrictions, allows them to puff or otherwise administer a daily 
dosage of THC while still maintaining their law abiding citizen status.

The respondents to the poll who so clearly see the wisdom of letting 
medical patients -- in many cases gravely ill with dehabilitating 
disease -- have access to a natural, non-addictive, source of relief 
with minimized side effects is clear. They probably believe marijuana 
is relatively easily to acquire for someone who, for example, has 
AIDS and turns to weed for its ability to fight nausea or bolster the appetite.

But they'd be wrong. Health Canada makes it anything but easy to use 
what may just be the best and only remedy for hundreds of thousands. 
That's why compassion clubs exist but they do so under shadowy legal 
circumstance and without the implicit approval of the state: witness 
the recent bust of the Mid-Island Compassion Club.

It serves no useful purpose to blame the police for doing their job. 
As the saying goes, cops don't make 'em, they only enforce them. But 
the ignorance and waste does bring to mind a question: Why have laws 
against drug use at all?

Rather than tie ourselves up in knots deciding what is and isn't a 
legitimate use for weed, or indeed any of the so called recreational 
drugs, why not consider abolishing the laws against all of them?

It's not as preposterous as it sounds.

Hopefully it's needless to point out the hypocrisy of a society that 
will throw one in jail for harvesting a plant with a long history of 
rich and varied use quite aside from its intoxicating properties; 
while at the same time blithely ignoring, even encouraging, the 
rampant abuse of alcohol. Besides, there is but one acceptable reason 
to criminalize drugs and that is deterrence.

On that score the laws not only aren't working, they're getting in 
the way. Unless we condone handing out life sentences or worse to 
those who grow or distribute marijuana, the market will continue to 
supply the considerable demand for a substance that provokes little 
by way of social disintegration outside of the odd carelessly 
discarded candy wrapper. Sure the gangs money and greed create 
violence and mayhem but that occurs in relation to the fact it's illegal.

As for the rest, (heroin, cocaine, ecstasy etc.) is it truly our 
belief that, given the opportunity, vast additional numbers will turn 
to cranking or snorting dangerous psychotropic drugs simply because 
there's no law against it? More to the point, why is it anybody's 
business in the first place? If society is so sure that any altering 
of the mindset is inherently destructive what's with the burgeoning 
prescription market for drugs-aimed at treating a host of mental 
illnesses-that do exactly that?

The only ones who benefit from an all out assault on drugs are the 
lawyers, police, jail guards and other employees tasked with 
warehousing and stigmatizing any and all who choose to use. All of it 
wasting money that would be better spent on education, social 
programs and rehabilitation that might actually reduce use and 
mitigate the damage-much of which is caused by the legal sanctions 
that place so many in precarious and unpredictable situations in the 
first place.

Like prostitution, drugs and their attendant social ills are a 
problem that's not about to go away. The odd forward thinking 
initiative like Vancouver's safe injection site have proven to be 
successful in reducing social harm. Pointed fingers, pious misguided 
moralizing and a refusal to accept that drug abuse is a health 
problem much more than a criminal issue does less than nothing to 
discourage the use of drugs or protect us from its consequences.
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MAP posted-by: Elaine