Grow ops reaching epidemic

CP24's website posted this amusing article a while back that I have been meaning to address. Apparently Canada has earned the title of "source country" for marijuana. Well duh, no kidding. OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino buys into the US's fanatical approach to drugs stating that "It's a black eye on Canada when you have the United States... refer to us as a source country of marijuana." Well, in response to Commissioner Fantino I say, its a black eye on this country when you have the cops arresting people for using a drug which has less negative long term effects than a diet high in fat.

Fantino is apparently most alarmed at the continued increase of organized crime involved in marijuana production and distribution. "Organized crime will use whoever and will do whatever (to) achieve their goals and objectives, which is to make these obscene profits illegally." Finally this cop says something I can agree with. Organized crime is a bad thing, that gangs continue to profit from marijuana is a bad thing, that violence is used to protect their profits is a bad thing. What I disagree with is Fantino's solution. Fantino want's tougher drug laws in Canada, and he has a hard on for US style war on drugs despite knowing that the war cannot be won.

So who the hell wants to fight a war that cannot be won? Why would Fantino buy into this madness. Why won't he bother to examine the facts. Sure marijuana trade can be one wrought with violence and criminal activity, you know how to solve this, change the law and legalize it.

I know, I know, I have said this a thousand times on this blog but its simple. To take the power out of the hands of organized crime you MUST put them in the hands of someone else. Marijuana use is not going away plain and simple, its not particularly dangerous, so why not just call a cease fire on the users and make it legal and make a regulated distribution system to take the power from the hands of the gangs and put it into the hands of ordinarily law abiding, tax paying citizens? What is the use in persecuting so many people for using a drug that the vast majority of us have at least tried.

Are the gangs going to vanish? No of course not, they will shift to other drugs, but at least cops can focus on what's important and arrest the right people. History has proven again and again that prohibition simply does not work.