Marijuana.com

Lit_Match

Lessons from prohibition not heeded
05-18-07|Osprey|Editoiral

Det. Const. Jay Hutton said, "We've seen marijuana linked to violence." What balderdash! Marijuana doesn't make people violent, the money around it does. What he has seen is marijuana prohibition linked to violence.

Luckily for the police, few Canadian journalists ever bother to ask cops the hard questions, so the police never have to come clean.

"We're right because we say we're right," is the police story, and it is simply regurgitated by the media.

Hutton even says; "We'll never get rid of the drugs. It's just trying to make our communities as safe as possible." By enforcing prohibition?! MORE nonsense! In the U.S. during the 1930s, alcohol was prohibited much as drugs are today. Children had easy access to bootleg liquor that blinded or killed many.

Gangsters ruled the streets with machine guns, police became less and less effective as the gangs, wealth and power grew, and corruption was rampant.

Mothers, grandmothers, and teachers lobbied the government to regulate alcohol so that it would be out of the hands of children.

They understood that when we criminalize a popular substance, we create a black market that preys on children.

How is it that people from 70 years ago were so much smarter than we are today?

Easy! They didn't believe the police, government, school, and church balderdash that says the only way to control drug use in society is with strict criminal sanctions.

And since we know for a fact that prohibition is doing far more damage to users and society than the drugs themselves ever could, who or what exactly, are the police and government trying to protect?

Their jobs, their power, and their budgets - that's what!

Russell Barth,

federal medical marijuana licence holder,

Ottawa