Pubdate: Fri, 09 Mar 2007
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2007 The Ottawa Citizen
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

A FUTILE WAR ON MARIJUANA

Another week, another grow-op bust. The latest, at the former Nordik 
Imperial Mushroom Farm in North Stormont, was unusually large, but 
you can be certain it's not the only multimillion-dollar 
marijuana-growing operation in Eastern Ontario. Police say they 
seized 3,100 plants and $700,000 worth of gear in the building near 
Moose Creek. They charged eight people with growing-related offences.

As usual, police linked the operation to organized crime, the 
official definition of which is three people involved in committing 
an offence for profit. Most grow-ops bigger than one plant in a 
basement would qualify.

Police have been trumpeting purported triumphs like this for decades, 
even as the street price of marijuana has slid and the proportion of 
THC intoxicant in any given joint has increased. They dismantled a 
30,000-plant grow-op in Barrie's decommissioned Molson brewery two 
years ago and the market absorbed the loss with scarcely a hiccup 
(it's more resilient than the market for gasoline, apparently). That 
raid evidently didn't dissuade the operators of the Moose Creek 
marijuana farm from setting up.

Grow-ops are dangerous because they're clandestine, not because 
there's something intrinsically hazardous about the plants in them. 
The only reason for chasing them down, at root, is a prohibitionary 
approach toward marijuana that we don't apply to alcohol or nicotine.

The war on pot is futile. It's long since time to declare a ceasefire.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom