Of course lagalising marijuana will not end criminal activity. Such an assertion is ridiculous, and I don't believe pro-legal marijuana people ever claim it will. Criminals, including gang members, do far more than distribute marijuana and the mind set of such people will continue.

I do note, however, that the article writer talks repeatedly in the first section about legalising marijuana, using numerous ad hominem attacks and ridicule as the arguments rather than presenting any facts then, after softening up the reader, switches to international drug suppliers without a change in beat, inferring that the two are identical, which is not the case.

Cocaine and heroin are not the same as marijuana. In fact, they are not the same as each other, and lumping all drugs into a single category serves to distract attention away from any rational discussion of the subject rather than encourage a public debate which may eventually lead to a partial resolution of the damage that has been caused by criminalisation of plant leaves.

For the record, I do not smoke or ingest marijuana nor any other recreational drug, except for an occasional beer. However, I do feel that our society has become overly concerned about what people do privately, and I see no reason why some, not all, substances could be made available for use while in your home. Certainly, marijuana is one such drug that could be made available through government liquor stores, the judge's pejorative condemnation notwithstanding.

If what drug users do privately would stay private I think there wouldn't be much of an argument here.

However, the effects of drug use are never just a PRIVATE matter. The emergency rooms at hospitals have to deal with those drug users who are brought in being in mental and physical distress, smoking causes lung cancer and other illnesses, being in control of a motor vehicles while being under the influence of any drug can have devastating results on others, families are destroyed by drug use....the list can go on ad infinitum.

I am totally against society throwing in the towel on illicit drug use. Marijuana first...then, once the foot is in the door slowly all the others?

Great example we would be giving to our children and grand children, indeed.

The abuse of alcohol is a big problem already - why legalize other mind altering substances?

Let's go after the growers and dealers and enforce the laws.

Dedicated narcissistic marijuana users are parasitical citizens????????? Is that not a little extreme?

Perhaps these "holier than thou" people should clean out their own medicine cabinets before they judge others.

Most teenagers I know had their first "high" on the Tylenol 3 bottle, some along with alcohol, both from their parents' supply.

Oxy-contin, Morphine, Tylenol 3 or 4, all are widely available on the street. Tylenol 3 sells for $1 a pill, affordable to almost all teenagers. Percadon, Percaset, Demerol and others are also still available, but to a lesser degree. Now these are all "legal" drugs, does that mean they're harmless?

I prefer to go with Larry Campbell"s suggestion - legalize marijuana, tax the hell out of it, and put every dollar into healhcare.

As usual the conservative commentators are way behind the 8 ball on this one. The facts is that the marijuana industry in BC is now probably our largest industry since forestry and tourism have hit the skids. Maybe we should legalize it, but only when the economy has recovered. We can't afford to right now. We need the fiscal stimulus of building new prisons to house all the criminals, we need to hire lots more cops to save us from ourselves, and think of all the cops, lawyers, judges and prison guards out of a job if marijuana were legal. For Gods sake, even the Hells Angels and all the other gangs would be left with little to do when they could no longer sell a weed for $3000 a pound. Legalize marijuana? Hell no, we can't afford to!

If we ever want to see our society in a major power dive,go ahead and legalize drugs.
It has been said that drugs have in fact become a major part of our economy, and I tend to think that's quite true.
Those who deal in drugs and it's profits spend it like just anyone else.
Houses,cars,trips,clothes...just like the rest of us.
I also think that drug money flows uphill and ends up in some very high places indirectly,and the drug market is "controlled" by those at the deep end of the trough to some extent.
One thing is for sure,the problem is not going away and making it legal won't change a thing, other than to make it worse.
And as diplomat said,what a great example we would be setting for our kids!
The biggest advocators of legalizing drugs are many times living in a drug induced state themselves, with little sense of logic or reality.

The following is a letter sent to Opinion250:

To The Editor, RE: Drug Legalization Lobby Lacks Business Plan

Like most prohibitionist zealots, Justice Wallace Craig ignores the facts. And like most prohibitionist zealots, he attacks the messenger (legalization lobbyists) because he can't argue the facts. Terms like “false prophets”, “live in la-la-land”, “deceitful addicts”, and “ fairy-tale legalization”, are designed to poison the well and muddy the waters. It would be laughable if it were not so comedically tragic.

People like Craig have obviously already made up their minds and are not swayed by things like “science”, “history”, and “facts”. They deal in a currency called “truthiness” - a word coined by satirist American Stephen Colbert, and used to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. That is Craig, all the way.

One need look only as far as the 2002 Senate Committee Report on Drugs (arguably the most comprehensive study on drug prohibition ever done) to see that this guy hasn't got a clue what he is talking about. The report (chaired by Conservative Senator Pierre-Claude Nolin) shows – unequivocally – that the prohibition on marijuana is causing more harm to the user and to society than the drug itself ever could.
http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/committee_senrep.asp?language=e&parl=37&Ses=1&comm_id=85

And finally, there are the dozens of proven medical applications that marijuana possesses: the treatment of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Crohn's, MS, HIV/AIDS, Hep C, epilepsy, dementia, PTSD, arthritis, muscles spams, and glaucoma to name a few. Recent science out of Germany even shows how cannabinoids stimulate the body's production of TIMP-1, which helps healthy cells resist cancer invasion:
www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20071226/pot-slows-cancer-in-test-tube

So if taking the riches away from gangsters and generating $3 billion in annual tax revenue isn't reason enough to legalize pot, then curing cancer should be.

Russell Barth
Federally Licensed Medical Marijuana User
Patients Against Ignorance and Discrimination on Cannabis
(PAIDOC)www.paidoc.org

PS: Referring to pot users, like me and my epileptic wife, as "addicts", could be actionable. As a former "judge", Craig should know this

Governments shouldn't be criminalizing consensual activity. The Court-Party - BC's parasitic government officers of the court - want drug prohibition to continue, because it means: jobs-for-the-boys. A huge bureaucracy has been set up to enforce useless law. Saturday's Vancouver Sun told how groups of 10 anti-gang cops are club-hopping in search of gangstas. What do they do when they find them? They evict them from night-clubs. What a worthless endeavour.

The second recreational drugs were legalized, the street market would dry up, as would the addict's need to steal to pay for a scarce commodity.

Further, the Drug-War has caused zealous judges-cops-prosecutors to work in unlawful tandem. We see this lawlessness in the easy conviction/low sentence madness of the current criminal justice administration. Innocent people plead guilty, with knowledge that most judges won't acknowledge systemic cop perjury. The Braidwood-Inquiry is revealing the depth of the Court-Party's depravity.

Let's close the sandbox of the special interests, and make those wheel-spinning parasites work for the wages we pay them.

An ironic post by a retired judge who essentially was a part of the vast problem in the so called soft and illicit drug war. The judges and lawmakers have already decriminalized the drug trade by allowing soft sentences and the undermining Youth Offenders ACT. The street level dealers are children, used as pawns by the dealers. Thus mitigating any useful deterrence. Very few high level dealers are ever prosecuted, nor dealt meaningful sentences.Who's fault is that?

Having lumped marijuana into a subgroup of drugs which are hardly considered soft seems to infer some confusion to what really is the perceived norm. Mr. Boyd's assertion I believe is more a reference to marijuana, not that I agree with his assessment of the issues. The marijuana business is epic in its supply volume indicating that the percentage of users is quite more significant than he estimates.

So doctors and pharmaceutical firms are merely legalized and accepted dealers. What the judge failed to offer was a solution, instead choosing berate a large amount of North America's population for their personal choice of pleasures.

Perhaps we need to research and compare the illegal BC Bud business versus gang wars with one of the more lax countries in regards to use and possession of the Happy Herb. With the Netherlands being a smaller country and significantly more population than BC, I wonder what their drug related gang warfare murder rate is.

"People like Craig have obviously already made up their minds"

Is this a normal characteristic for a judge?

http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/taking-the-fun-out-of-pot

According to the above linked article, 16.8% of adult Canadians have tried cannabis and only 6.1% of Dutch adults.

It is illegal in Canada and legal in the Netherlands.

I think we need to enforce cannabis use in Canada much more strictly so that more adult Canadians will try cannabis and increase the cost to the justice system, increase the underground market economy, increase gang wars, increase death by lead, and so on.

Who said that one of the pre-requisites to be a judge was a high level of intelligence and street smarts?

Legalizing pot won't reduce crime, that's a fairy tale. There are so many worse things out there that organized crime will move into that it won't even make a dent. On the other hand legalizing pot for adults won't make society any worse as any that currently want it already get it.

The reality of the situation is that medical and social problems due to recreational drug use are already being paid for the province.

It would seem to me that whether a particular drug is legal or forbidden has little effect on whether it causes these societal problems. A person who is drunk is drunk whether he got ithat way from taxed vodka or untaxed moonshine. The difference is that the taxes from the vodka can help defray policing costs while there is no tax income from the moonshine.

It is the same with other forbidden recreational drugs: there is no tax income to support society so any costs have to be covered by the provincial treasury without any recovery from users. That is not fair to non-users. Legalising some of them would enable cost recovery and reduce criminal incomes at the same time.

As to children, I suggest that parental example and education campaigns, the costs being defrayed by taxes on the drugs involved, would counteract any such. At the moment, children are being taught it is wonderful by the example of illegal users among their friends and aquaintances, and I think that is a most undesirable situation. Hiding things like this never works in the long run.

Out of it politicians like to talk about the Main and Hastings area of Vancouver, with its open prohibition drug mart. They don't tell you that most dealers are crack addicted marijuana peddlers. Meth and heroin, etc are generally sold in back alleys or hotels. As for the area being dangerous, drug traders don't need police hassle so they leave others alone. Most of the prohibition market is within a 3 block area. Generally, drug arrests are incidental to process arrests. That is, they enforce Bench orders: Failure to Appear; Breach of Release Conditions; etc. Yah, cops spend most of their time doing slave work for our culturally illiterate judicial class.

I think legalizing pot would be a great idea. In todays mindset we could create thousands of jobs in the pot business. Growers, sellers, tax collectors, and of course a 20 person board in each area with the mandatory CEO's that go with it. Think of the spin-offs - grow lights, fertilizers, power usage, pumps, generators, etc. In this day and age it would be a perfect fit to legalize pot. We could call it diversification of the economy and it will be mostly "green". We could put all of the truckers to work hauling pot to processing plants instead of beatle kill to closed mills. We could also distribute the crop by trucks, then if we had a crash and burn accident it could be one big pot party with some free enterprisers selling munchies on sight. The possibilities are endless. Cheers.

If any level of any of our governments ran the drug business like they do everything else, that could be the one and only main reason I would let the government run it. That way, the govt. would surely destroy the system in a few years. Remember, everything the government touches, turns to crap. Look in the phone book under government listings. Read the name of the government department and remember what you read about it in the past. Especially the Lieberal party.

Why stop at making the drug business the business of government? How about legalizing prostitution as well? The government can build bordellos, hire suitable hookers and make them government employees. That would put the pimps out of business, get the hookers off the street and create more government departments, supervisors and charge as much as it likes by setting the rates.

That way the government can collect taxes off all the vices that mankind is afflicted with: Gambling, smoking, prostitution, alcohol addictions, drug addictions, etc.

There must be more and they can be found if the government is running short on funds or when too many people decide to change their habits.

Heaven forbid.

That is a communist idea, diplomat, called nationalisation. Modern progressive people are opposed to that kind of atate ownership.

all the vices that mankind is afflicted with: Gambling, smoking, prostitution, alcohol addictions, drug addictions, etc.

etc = junk food, huge cars, huge houses, cell phones, 100+ tv stations, big screen tvs, computers, golf, travelling vacations, designer clothes, expensive pets, downhill skiing ....

mankind will give up the time it takes to raise a family in order to gather junk that self destructs so that new junk has to be bought to replace the old junk.

Someone should take a close look at that to see whether the activities typically listed under vices are more detrimental to society than consumerism.

I think they don't come anywhere near to the level of self destruction that consumerism brings to society as well as to the environment.

Ammonra March 15 2009 6:23 AM: "Certainly, marijuana is one such drug that could be made available through government liquor stores,..."

Ammonra on March 15 2009 10:15 PM: "That is a communist idea, diplomat, called nationalisation. Modern progressive people are opposed to that kind of state ownership."

I am sure you will deny that you yourself are suggesting state ownership in your very first post.

Obviously you are not one those "Modern progressive people."

BTW, like the two posts before mine, my comment was pure sarcasm, as I am opposed to government running anything which private business can run more efficiently.

Railroads, ferries and such are good examples.

What an irrational rant.....

I'm glad that Wallace Craig has retired because that editorial is a train wreck.

I hope demonstrated more intelligence when he was presiding.

Hey judge, get your facts straight.
Opiates have been not only legal, but there were opium dens throughout the civilized world up until the 1970's. Made illegal because it was difficult to tax.

LSD is relatively new recreational drug originally developed in the 1930's by the USA military as an interrogation tool. It became recreational thanks to T. Leary expounding on the benefits of free thinking. Made illegal because it was too much fun.

Marijuana, is a wild plant considered to be a weed and is a cellulose source far superior to wood fiber that is renewable annually. The only reason it is illegal is because Ralph Randal Hearst felt that it threatened the value his wood lot holding, so he had his buddies make it illegal, Canada followed shortly after because Canada is such a good bi'atch to the USA back then.

Alcohol was illegal for a short period as well thanks to the politically strong religious leaders. It was called prohibition. It did not last because enough people just went out and got it anyway.

We still have prohibition and it is still for the same reasons. Nothing to do with health or safety or public good. It all has to do with either population control, "Citizens will only consume what the government allows you to.", or with the government being able to tax and regulate, or some wealthy entity with powerful connections feeling threatened.

actually, legalizing pot would reduce criminality. I don't know anyone that smokes up then wants to go do something active.
Let them all get stoned. they will just lie around and watch the paint peel, then fall asleep.

Alcohol has caused more damage and injury to more people than any other mood altering substance.

I think views like that of Justice Wallace Craig based only for his own interest and pleasures is a parasitic cancer to society.

That kind of extremism I think needs to be answered with realism, rationalism, and facts... rather than unfounded rhetoric that stems from a complete ignorance of the subject from a health perspective as well as a persons individual rights. How this man became a judge is beyond my comprehension.

Marijuana is the most benign drug there is I can think of... marijuana has been used as long as history has been written... without ever any scientifically proven ill health effects in thousands of years of use. This is proven fact.

To argue as Justice Wallace does that a natural marijuana plant should be made into an industry monopolized by gangsters that will use what ever chemical means available to increase profits is disgusting. It monetizes the criminals and threatens the health of people that would smoke the stuff they sell.

This is a power tripping judge with little understanding of the issue other than he wants laws to control peoples lives... because he is superior to the rest of us. This is the same kind of judge that allows deals in his court to bargain freedom for these same gangsters IMO.

Marijuana law is a great tool to create a legal right to violate a law abiding persons rights with, but does nothing to stop crime.

Marijuana should never be classified with the proven harmful drugs like crack, cocaine, heroin, or the manufactured harmful ones like LSD and ecstasy.

"I don't know anyone that smokes up then wants to go do something active.
Let them all get stoned. they will just lie around and watch the paint peel, then fall asleep."

Hopefully they won't fall asleep behind the steering wheel of their vehicle while doing 120 clicks on the highway or in the middle of a busy intersection or when coming up to a stop sign.

Craig isn't the only ex-judge who is blogging. Bouck is a reactionary, former Section 96 (federally appointed) judge. Read about his "Singapore Solution."

http://www.bouckslawblog.com/bouckslawblog/2009/02/criminal-law-gang-activities-war-on-drugs.html

Again, crack and meth ("rock" or "crystal") heads don't make good criminals because protein deficiency is inherent to the addiction. Most pay for same by selling Marijuans, if male, or sex, if female. If they didn't have to pay for it, they wouldn't commit prohibition "crimes." I have come to the conclusion that they are pushed into those lifestyles by social marginalization. I blame police lawlessness for the invention of all underground sub-cultures.