Ontario's top court today ruled unanimously (3-0) that Canada's law making marijuana possession a crime is unconstitutional, because it does not take into account the needs of sick and dying Canadians for medical marijuana. (Ontario has one-third of the population of Canada.)
The Government may appeal the ruling, but the politicians can no longer duck the issue.
The judges did allow the law to remain in effect for another 12 months, to permit Parliament to rewrite it.
However, if it does not there will be NO marijuana laws in Canada.
Now, as you can no doubt tell, I am a "drug user". What you may NOT realise is that YOU probably are too!
Do you drink beer, wine, liquors?
Do you smoke cigarettes, cigars, a pipe?
Do you drink coffee, tea, cola?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, you are using drugs, and are by definition a drug user.
Alcohol is a drug, it has averse effects on the human system, wrecks homes, kills people every day in a variety of different ways (traffic accidents, poisoning and liver problems to mention just a few), and yet it's legal for adults, and socially accepted these days. Remember, however, that it wasn't always. The prohibition in the US during the 1930's made alcohol illegal, and what happened? Gangsters sold it illegally and made millions (smuggling it in from Canada, or brewing it themselves). Individuals brewed their own, and faced incarceration, fines, and other horrible consequences.
Sound familiar...?
Cigarettes are proved to cause lung cancer, asthma and emphysema, not ONLY to the people who are smoking them, but to PEOPLE AROUND THEM. You can get sick from cigarette smoke MERELY from standing BESIDE a person who's smoking. The choice that someone else makes can harm YOU, and yet these are also legal for adults and acceptable (although they are becoming less acceptable these days, if the trend on public smoking is any indication). Cigarette companies pump unnatural, extrordinarily harmful chemicals into their cigarettes for the SOLE purpose of making them more addictive and better tasting, so smokers smoke MORE, get MORE sick, and get MORE addicted. Yet, these things are legal for adults.
Cigars are smoked, but not meant to be inhaled (so they say), so they're supposed to be safer. All that does is move the problems from the lungs to the mouth, tongue and throat. Perhaps they are made of a more "pure" form of tobacco, with less chemicals, I can't honestly say, but they are still made of tobacco leaf, which is a drug.
Colas (in Canada only a cola is allowed to contain caffeine), some teas, regular coffee, and many other things contain caffeine. This is also a drug, and in large amounts it's deadly. Yet, it's not only acceptable to be a caffeine user, it is assumed. "Every" adult has a drink of coffee in the morning, "Every" kid drinks cola. You'd never allow your kids to smoke, or drink alcohol, and yet you GIVE THEM caffeine. YOU are the drug dealer for your children when it comes to caffeine.
Before I get any farther, I'd like to point out that I enjoy a drink once-in-a-while, I enjoy a cigar once-in-a-while and I'll have a pop, or a tea. This has NOT made me a raving drug addict, and it won't make most people raving drug addicts.
The reason why I'm pointing all this out is to illustrate the hypocrisy of the opinions of other drugs. The Government sell drugs to people (liquor stores, beer stores), and spends some of the money in education and health aspects, trying to get people to NOT use them, or to use them more responsibly. There are age restrictions, so that "children" (the ages vary based on jurisdiction) aren't overly exposed to the drug's detrimental effects before they are old enough to adequately deal with it.
However, the law and the government allows adults to (bleep) up their bodies in any number of ways, legally, using the above substances, and (in Canada) PAYS for it with the public health care system. So YOU, and I, pay for Joe the Moron who got loaded at the bar, drove home, killed a family and broke his own back. HE's on welfare because he can't work. The people he killed are, well, DEAD, and we're paying for his welfare with our taxes, and his rehabilitation with our taxes.
Now, what's the difference between Joe the Moron getting loaded on alcohol, and getting "stoned" (high on pot)? Obviously, alcohol is legal (you can even brew it yourself, as long as you don't sell it), but marijuana is not. Both are derived from natural plants, both have been used for millennia by humans for their intoxicating purposes (humans like to be high, it seems), both have also been used for millennia as a medicine and marijuana has been used for clothing, as food and thousands of other uses (in case you didn't know, marijuana and HEMP are the same plant). Yet, if I go to the corner, buy 1/8th of an ounce of pot I broke the law. If I grow it myself, I broke the law.
Remember above I said "Sound familiar..."? If not, scroll up until you see it, and read the paragraph above it. OK? Good. The difference is legislation. The hemp plant is very useful, but since it was SO useful: it could eat into the profits of the Pulp and Paper companies, because hemp is better for making paper than trees are, and it obviously won't involve the cutting down of 1000 year old trees, it could eat into the profits of the cotton companies, because it's a stronger, better fabric than cotton for a lot of industrial applications (sailboat sails were made of hemp for years, the original Levi's Jeans were made of hemp), if you can get high, then there's less reason for you to get drunk, and the alcohol companies (Beer, liquors, wines) would rather you kill your brain cells with THEIR products, just to name a few uses, check out some others
So here is what I propose (and some people won't agree, some will want me shot on site (probably the same morons who "save lives" by KILLING ABORTION DOCTORS, DUH!), but some of you WILL agree, or will see my reasons and at least understand): LEGALISE ALL DRUGS.
Yes. I said ALL DRUGS. I'll repeat it one more time:
Legalise All Drugs
Ok, got it now? Why, you may ask. There'll be mass chaos, rioting in the streets, dogs and cats living together, the End of the World(tm) as we know it! (with all the appropriate apologies to the songs and movies I stole the above from). You know something, for the first little while there WILL be some chaos, it WILL take some getting used to, and it WILL NOT be perfect. However, I believe that if ALL drugs are treated as alcohol, the world will be a much better place. If I could go down to the liquor store, pick up a litre of Rye, a pack of joints, and an ounce of magic mushrooms, I'd feel better, because I know that the quality of the drugs will be legislated and tested, just like the alcohol. No one will get a "bad batch" of killer heroin, because it'll be tested. Everyone will get a clean needle, because they'll be provided as part of your purchase price.
Also, since there are legal places to buy ALL the drugs, there will be much fewer ILLEGAL places to buy the drugs. I'm not saying that there will be NO places to buy illegal drugs, because it's possible to buy alcohol illegally, and cigarettes illegally, but there will be less of an incentive to use these untrustworthy places. If you have to have an age of majority card to buy your drugs, then kids won't use drugs any more then they use alcohol.
Since I brought it up, let's talk about the children. Kids Will Get Alcohol, Kids Will Get Cigarettes, Kids Will Get Drugs, and Kids Will Get Porn. I did when I was a kid, your kids do if they want, my kids will too. There is no force on this planet that can stop kids doing what they want to do. They are smart, resourceful, and curious. If, however, we do our best to ensure that if they ever DO get their hands on these adult substances, that the quality is there, they're educated enough to understand the uses and consequences, and if the mystery is taken out of these substances, the curiosity will be FAR LESS than it is now.
Now, many of you are thinking about the money involved. How much money does the government make ever year from cigarettes sales? Alcohol sales? Billions of dollars probably wouldn't be an exaggeration. The fact that governments don't know how to spend the money is a different rant altogether, if the governments treated ALL drugs the same, they could bring in BILLIONS MORE dollars every year in taxes and other fees, and they could spend that money on better education and better treatment for abusers. They would also save BILLIONS of dollars every year in jails and prisons. There would be more space in the prisons for the REAL bad-guys (rapists, murders and other unsavoury characters).
G
edited for language
[This message has been edited by Krong (edited 06-18-2001).]
[This message has been edited by Fralcon (edited 06-19-2001).] reg
Just kidding.