Jim Finnel
Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex News Moderator
LEDUC - The tie Leduc addiction counsellor Gene LeBlanc makes between the consequences of legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco, when compared to the illegal drug marijuana, has been a contentious issue lately for scientists and lawmakers.
According to the article 'Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse', published in 2007 by the respected British medical journal The Lancet, marijuana was ranked as causing less harm and being less addictive then both tobacco and alcohol. As in Canada, marijuana use in Britain is illegal, while tobacco and alcohol use is legal. The report noted the contradiction of having the more harmful substances tobacco and alcohol legal while less harmful substances are illegal, with laws seemingly based only on which substances are more widely socially accepted.
"The exclusion of alcohol and tobacco from the ( British ) Misuse of Drugs Act is, from a scientific perspective, arbitrary. We saw no clear distinction between socially acceptable and illicit substances," the report examined. "Discussions based on a formal assessment of harm rather than on prejudice and assumptions might help society to engage in a more rational debate about the relative risks and harms of drugs."
Canada's Parliament has looked into marijuana prohibition and a Senate committee came to similar conclusions in 2002. The Special Committee on Illegal Drugs issued a report recommending marijuana be legalized and regulated in a similar manner to alcohol and tobacco.
The Committee found marijuana was added to the drug control act in 1923, before which the drug was "virtually unknown in Canada and its use was not a problem." A moral panic in the U.S., tied to marijuana's use by Mexican laborers, might have encouraged Canada to ban the drug. In Canada, Emily Murphy contributed to the panic with her book The Black Candle where she claimed that after smoking marijuana people "become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility."
Drug control in Canada began only slightly earlier in the century with the Opium Act of 1908. The Act was targeted towards the largely Chinese-Canadian opium dealers in British Columbia, and came on the heals of an anti-Chinese riot in Vancouver by the Asiatic Exclusion League in 1907. The Canadian government raised the head tax on Asian immigration to $500 in 1904, and the Canadian and American temperance movement ? which aimed to ban alcohol and other vices ? quickly moved against Asian drugs as well in an attempt to capture popular sentiment.
"Whites who frequented Chinese opium dens were often seen as suspicious or dangerous," the committee noted in its report. "The temperance movement did not hesitate to adopt the racist feeling driving certain segments of American society in order to denounce the use of opium, seen as a scourge that promoted immorality, crime and the decline of the white Anglo-Saxon race."
The Committee found the continued prohibition of marijuana and not alcohol or tobacco in the present day was less due to science then global political orientation.
"The international drug control conventions are, at least with respect to cannabis, an utterly irrational restraint that has nothing to do with scientific or public health considerations," the committee explained.
"The international regime for the control of psychoactive substances, beyond any moral or even racist roots it may initially have had, is first and foremost a system that reflects the geopolitics of North- South relations in the 20th century. Indeed, the strictest controls were placed on organic substances ? the coca bush, the poppy, and the cannabis plant ? which are often part of the ancestral traditions of the countries where these plants originate, whereas the North's cultural products, tobacco and alcohol, were ignored and the synthetic substances produced by the North's pharmaceutical industry were subject to regulation rather than prohibition."
Besides estimating that enforcing marijuana prohibition costs Canada around $300 million annually and ties up 30 per cent of the activity of the justice system, the committee claimed the social costs of marijuana use are primarily due to its criminalization, and not the drug itself.
The committee's report recommended against decriminalization, which it referred to as "the worst case scenario" as it would deprive the state of the ability to control the drug and simultaneously deliver "hypocritical messages." Instead the report recommends the "regulation of the production, distribution and consumption of cannabis." A regulatory system, the report explained, would be more effective at targeting organized crime, be able to have real world prevention programs, enhanced product monitoring, better education and "respect for individual and collective freedoms, and legislation more in tune with the behavior of Canadians."
United States drug policy official David Murray jumped into the fray in 2003, explaining that the American government would "have to respond. We would be forced to respond" if Canada moved towards decriminalizing marijuana, echoing the committee's prediction legalization or decriminalization could cause problems with the Americans.
Following the committee's report, in February 2004, the Canadian government introduced a bill to decriminalize the possession of 15 grams or less of marijuana. The bill died when Parliament was adjourned in May.
The current Canadian government has not made plans to decriminalize or legalize marijuana, and has moved in the opposite direction. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has included mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana trafficking among his tough-on-crime bills, with the most recent iteration dying when parliament was dissolved last March before the federal election.
NewsHawk: Jim Behr: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: Leduc Representative (CN AB)
Copyright: 2011 Osprey Media
Contact: Leduc Representative - Alberta, CA
Website: Leduc Representative - Alberta, CA
Details: MapInc
Author: Simon Yackulic
According to the article 'Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse', published in 2007 by the respected British medical journal The Lancet, marijuana was ranked as causing less harm and being less addictive then both tobacco and alcohol. As in Canada, marijuana use in Britain is illegal, while tobacco and alcohol use is legal. The report noted the contradiction of having the more harmful substances tobacco and alcohol legal while less harmful substances are illegal, with laws seemingly based only on which substances are more widely socially accepted.
"The exclusion of alcohol and tobacco from the ( British ) Misuse of Drugs Act is, from a scientific perspective, arbitrary. We saw no clear distinction between socially acceptable and illicit substances," the report examined. "Discussions based on a formal assessment of harm rather than on prejudice and assumptions might help society to engage in a more rational debate about the relative risks and harms of drugs."
Canada's Parliament has looked into marijuana prohibition and a Senate committee came to similar conclusions in 2002. The Special Committee on Illegal Drugs issued a report recommending marijuana be legalized and regulated in a similar manner to alcohol and tobacco.
The Committee found marijuana was added to the drug control act in 1923, before which the drug was "virtually unknown in Canada and its use was not a problem." A moral panic in the U.S., tied to marijuana's use by Mexican laborers, might have encouraged Canada to ban the drug. In Canada, Emily Murphy contributed to the panic with her book The Black Candle where she claimed that after smoking marijuana people "become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility."
Drug control in Canada began only slightly earlier in the century with the Opium Act of 1908. The Act was targeted towards the largely Chinese-Canadian opium dealers in British Columbia, and came on the heals of an anti-Chinese riot in Vancouver by the Asiatic Exclusion League in 1907. The Canadian government raised the head tax on Asian immigration to $500 in 1904, and the Canadian and American temperance movement ? which aimed to ban alcohol and other vices ? quickly moved against Asian drugs as well in an attempt to capture popular sentiment.
"Whites who frequented Chinese opium dens were often seen as suspicious or dangerous," the committee noted in its report. "The temperance movement did not hesitate to adopt the racist feeling driving certain segments of American society in order to denounce the use of opium, seen as a scourge that promoted immorality, crime and the decline of the white Anglo-Saxon race."
The Committee found the continued prohibition of marijuana and not alcohol or tobacco in the present day was less due to science then global political orientation.
"The international drug control conventions are, at least with respect to cannabis, an utterly irrational restraint that has nothing to do with scientific or public health considerations," the committee explained.
"The international regime for the control of psychoactive substances, beyond any moral or even racist roots it may initially have had, is first and foremost a system that reflects the geopolitics of North- South relations in the 20th century. Indeed, the strictest controls were placed on organic substances ? the coca bush, the poppy, and the cannabis plant ? which are often part of the ancestral traditions of the countries where these plants originate, whereas the North's cultural products, tobacco and alcohol, were ignored and the synthetic substances produced by the North's pharmaceutical industry were subject to regulation rather than prohibition."
Besides estimating that enforcing marijuana prohibition costs Canada around $300 million annually and ties up 30 per cent of the activity of the justice system, the committee claimed the social costs of marijuana use are primarily due to its criminalization, and not the drug itself.
The committee's report recommended against decriminalization, which it referred to as "the worst case scenario" as it would deprive the state of the ability to control the drug and simultaneously deliver "hypocritical messages." Instead the report recommends the "regulation of the production, distribution and consumption of cannabis." A regulatory system, the report explained, would be more effective at targeting organized crime, be able to have real world prevention programs, enhanced product monitoring, better education and "respect for individual and collective freedoms, and legislation more in tune with the behavior of Canadians."
United States drug policy official David Murray jumped into the fray in 2003, explaining that the American government would "have to respond. We would be forced to respond" if Canada moved towards decriminalizing marijuana, echoing the committee's prediction legalization or decriminalization could cause problems with the Americans.
Following the committee's report, in February 2004, the Canadian government introduced a bill to decriminalize the possession of 15 grams or less of marijuana. The bill died when Parliament was adjourned in May.
The current Canadian government has not made plans to decriminalize or legalize marijuana, and has moved in the opposite direction. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has included mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana trafficking among his tough-on-crime bills, with the most recent iteration dying when parliament was dissolved last March before the federal election.
NewsHawk: Jim Behr: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: Leduc Representative (CN AB)
Copyright: 2011 Osprey Media
Contact: Leduc Representative - Alberta, CA
Website: Leduc Representative - Alberta, CA
Details: MapInc
Author: Simon Yackulic
