Marijuana growing is arguably B.C.‚s biggest industry.
It‚s believed to generate $4 billion in annual revenue, with about 70% of it being exported to the U.S. B.C. is estimated to have 60,000 marijuana-growing operations, each with a constellation of jobs for electricians, pruners, horticulturalists, security people, marketers and, yes, bankers, real estate agents and SUV dealers. It‚s an economic development dream: high-value export jobs spread over destitute resource towns across the province.
And we‚ve put it all in the hands of gangsters. On top of that, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars chasing them around, and now we‚re adding $9 billion to expand the jail industry to incarcerate them in the name of stopping pot-smoking (and other crimes). Yet marijuana use stays constant. Marijuana prohibition has built a crime industry that terrorizes our communities with meth-laden pot, hard drug pushers and murder.
Now, in the name of reducing crime, the federal government is passing a law ‚ awaiting royal assent ‚ that creates a mandatory sentence for growing six pot plants. This is a crime with no victims, no violence and no harm to society remotely comparable with the harm from alcohol or tobacco or overeating or driving while talking on a cellphone.
It has often been said that Canada can‚t legalize pot because the Americans wouldn‚t let us ‚ look how they came up here and seized Marc Emery, who hadn‚t broken any Canadian laws.
Has anyone in Ottawa checked what‚s happening in the U.S. lately?
The federal Tories like to emulate their southern brethren. Fine, but instead of aiming for the highest incarceration rates in the world, why not follow the U.S. popular trend to pot legalization? While U.S. federal law still considers marijuana a dangerous drug, 53% of Americans support legalizing marijuana, according to a 2009 Angus Reid poll. Medical marijuana use is now allowed in 15 states, the latest being Arizona. Someone who recently returned from several months in California told me any adult who wants it can get a ‚215‚ permit from compliant doctors in that state, allowing them to smoke marijuana ‚for medical reasons‚ and grow up to 99(!) plants ‚for personal use.‚
The medical marijuana industry is about to launch its first national trade association, the Washington, D.C.-based National Cannabis Industry Association, representing dispensaries, growers and equipment suppliers. In 12 states, possession of up to an ounce of marijuana is no longer a criminal offence.
Mandatory sentencing for minor pot production doesn‚t stop anyone from smoking marijuana: it just triggers many more trials and fills jails with B.C.‚s new captains of industry at a cost of $57,000 a year in a provincial jail, $88,000 in a federal institution.
U.S. President Barak Obama‚s drug czar recently visited Canada and said that ‚almost every single state‚ in the U.S. is looking at reducing mandatory minimum penalties because prison populations have exploded with non-violent drug offenders.
A pot-grower is not a violent person. We already have laws to lock up the serious violent criminals. Some of them must be working because the crime rate is steadily declining.
Will our children turn into drug-crazed zombies if pot is legalized? Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs in 2001, and a study almost 10 years later has found there‚s less teen drug use, and a slight increase in adult drug use that‚s comparable with drug use rates in other countries that didn‚t change their drug policies. In the U.S., where drug enforcement spending jumped 600% from 1981 to 2002, pot prices are down, potency is up and use among Grade 12 students is up.
It‚s time for B.C. business associations to promote the B.C economy and attack wasteful public spending by advocating a shift from hysteria to evidence-based policy on marijuana legalization.
The best way to fight crime is to legalize pot and put the pot gangsters out of business.