IT'S TIME TO DECLARE PEACE

It seems we can't turn on our TV sets or open our newspapers in British Columbia without being subjected to a bombardment of media coverage of police raids on marijuana-growing operations.  We read strong statements from police all over the lower mainland about "cleaning out these operations." Recently, a B.C.  judge handed down a stiff sentence as a "deterrent" in one of these cases.  Predictably, The Vancouver Sun called this "the right thing to do." Clearly, the provincial establishment is trying to pull together on this get-tough stance on marijuana.

But what do they think this hard line will accomplish, and how far would they like it to go? In the United States, the use of what amounts to paramilitary police squads and mass incarceration programs with mandatory life sentences has already been tried.  In the past 20 years, Washington's "war on drugs" has cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.  It has brought social disaster to hundreds of thousands of families, clogged courts and prisons, bankrolled organized crime by inflating drug prices, and caused widespread corruption among police departments.  Yet it has not resulted in any decrease in the availability of drugs.

So, given this example, why are our media not asking the get-tough advocates in Canada what they think their proposals would actually achieve?

And why haven't the media given much serious consideration to what it is these police raids are trying to wipe out? Marijuana is one of the most intensively researched drugs in history.  That research started in the 19th century with the British Commission on Indian Hemp, and has continued in Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand, the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, Britain and Canada.  All the major studies have concluded that, for most people, marijuana is relatively safe, non-addictive and not a gateway to more serious drug use.  Indeed, we are now recognizing several beneficial medical effects from its reasonable use.

So why are we continuing to criminalize tens of thousands of our citizens every year for using this generally safe, pleasant and beneficial plant? Well, here is the bottom line, and it is something that the media don't have the guts to say.  The laws on marijuana are simply wrong.  Wrong because they are not based on scientific research or any kind of social reality.  Instead, we Canadians are being directed by the socially disastrous ideology of the American war on drugs.

If we adopted an intelligent, effective and socially realistic approach to drug control, we would have to be willing to resist the political pressures that would be brought to bear on Canada by the war-on-drugs interests in the United States.  The war on drugs is not only unjust and uneconomic, it is unwinnable.  The Americans have proved that.  Arresting, fining and imprisoning thousands of Canadians to please the Americans by going along with their inhuman, corrupt and socially bankrupt fantasy is not a good idea.

So let's start asking our guardians of freedom in the media to stop going along for the ride on this issue.  It's time they found the courage to ask our politicians intelligent and honest questions about the future of the war on drugs.  It's time our politicians found the courage to give us honest intelligent answers.