Pubdate: Fri, 03 Aug 2012 Source: Kelowna Capital News (CN BC) Copyright: 2012, West Partners Publishing Ltd. Contact: http://www.kelownacapnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1294 Author: Darrin Fiddler TIME TO EMBRACE MARIJUANA'S POSSIBILITIES To the editor: We all have a vice, be it smoking, drinking, gambling or online shopping. These legal vices pay towards our tax base and lotteries, and are therefore 'good.' Pot smoking is a vice, or it can also be a medical necessity. The latter is in doubt not because of its lack of evidence, but for the inability to scientifically reproduce its effects. Marijuana is depicted as a social scourge, though it kills fewer of us than both alcohol and peanuts. What packs this weed into the bowl of legal exclusion, placing it alongside the deadly, brain-rewiring and addictive narcotics? The demoralized weed has more notoriety than genetically-perverted plants and behaviour-altering food additives. Why be so harsh? We legalized liver-destroying booze, cancer-inducing tobacco, mind-altering pharmaceuticals, bone-crushing speed limits and technologies of unknown influence. Meanwhile, the near-benign marijuana, with biofuel-producing capabilities and a side industry of hemp production, continues to drain society rather than build it up to great possibilities. Echoes of the 1920s alcohol Prohibition bubble up, and post-analysis (of that era) reveals that the move was a drastic failure. It bolstered a bootleg industry and deprived a nation of liquor taxes and control mechanisms. It enforced a nation of closet drinkers and hypocritical policy makers, both disregarding the law to fit their personal needs. Then, the prohibition empowered bootleggers to spawn underground syndicates. The delicious profits of the illicit trade were irresistible, creating the need for law enforcement. This became the foundation for our current, never-ending War on Drugs. During the original Prohibition, sensational stories abound. A 14-year-old girl was placed on the prisoner docket for transporting two pints of liquor across the road. Government agents killed a farmer's wife for possession of a few bottles of moonshine. Support for the Prohibition weakened as the government tightened enforcement, and slowly eroded the citizen's human rights in the name of security. Rather than learning a lesson from the past, we have insanely renewed the attempts in hope of a different result. Today, this zero-tolerance torch is held by the Drug Enforcement Agency, confiscating lives and imprisoning drug mules. As our rights are infringed and the punishment harshened, we again race down a bootleggers' road chasing a demand deemed illegal, more by law than by public consensus. How long can we afford to hold this in? This doesn't appear to be a system designed to better society. Rather, it creates felons and employs law enforcement, enabling a system that feeds itself and denies resolution. Vilifying nature doesn't work; perhaps it is time to embrace her possibilities. Darrin Fiddler, Kelowna - --- MAP posted-by: Matt