OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's Liberal government has reintroduced legislation to decriminalise the possession of small amounts of marijuana, drawing criticism that this could prompt a clampdown at the U.S. border.
The bill would replace criminal sanctions with fines for small amounts, 15 grams or about half an ounce, with youths getting smaller fines than adults.
Opposition Conservative Member of Parliament Vic Toews voiced fears that the legislation could end up jeopardizing the world's richest trading relationship, valued at more than $1 billion (545.2 million pounds) a day.
"We know that the Americans are very opposed to this bill," he told reporters in the lobby outside the House of Commons. "How does this government guarantee us that there won't be retaliatory action by the Americans?"
U.S. drug enforcement officials have warned that the relaxed laws could mean a surge in smuggling of potent Canadian marijuana -- a business already worth about C$5 billion (2.2 billion pounds) in the Pacific province of British Columbia.
the conservatives have a valid point. but i think they can be silenced by questioning them if canada is run by canada, or the USA, then perhaps staring at them menacingly for a minute or so while they squirm.
I'm all for it. And I'd suggest the US get with the act. There is no stopping drug use of this nature so the best wayt o deal with it, is with this law.
Looking at the topic title I wonder if you have been sampling the wares yourself there roid.
Recriminisation indeed!
Seriously I think this idea will just further sour our relationship with the U.S. That long undefended border will look all the more threatening if our pot laws are loose. Soon U.S. college kids will be coming across the border to smoke up and then it will be Terrance and Phillip all over again. Blame Canada!! EEEK.
Canada could potentially have a helluva hemp industry. If growers and convince the government to let'em grow. Think the US won't buy hemp from Canada, with all it's uses? I'm moving to Canada and buying stock in clothing companies.
Wrong way to think about it, Merlin. The proper analogy would be to liken it to relaxing public intoxication penalties. At least that comparison is parallel; yours is an inverse.
Marijuana is evil. It makes you go insane. It should be irradicated.
Well at least we can see that marijuana is not the only thing that leads to spelling difficulties.
I know I am being a pest but some times I just can't help myself.
I spent over a decade using pot and hash as recreation. I touched on LSD, mushrooms and even a line or two of coke. Six months after I stopped using pot (and the rest) I noticed significantly increased short term memory and ability to concentrate, this affect peaked about a year after I stopped. That was almost 20 years ago. I don't think pot makes you insane but I do think there are bad effects that the user does not normally recognize in him/her self.
That said I don't think any drugs should be illegal to use. Making drugs illegal just creats a criminal class to fill the demand and that just creates more crime in the form of turf wars and in the case of truly addicting drugs like coke and heroin massive amounts of property crime as addicts have to steal to buy their drug of choice. Prohibition did not work for alcohol and as far as I can see the only people benifiting from drug laws are drug suppliers and the police. Drug addiction is an illness that should be treated by doctors. I would much prefer to pay for an addicts drugs through my taxes instead of my sky high insurance premiums and security costs I am sure I would save thousands of dollars.
Ferno wrote:Topgun: since when do a few speak for the whole?
Who's speaking for whom? I'm just stating my opinion. Every person I know who uses pot in a regular basis is a total spaced-out waste of oxygen. I'm not saying that this is true for every pot user, but this is my own personal experience. Also, putting aside any "drugs are evil" arguments, I see absolutely no reason for pot to be legalized. It serves no beneficial purpose; in fact, it just screws with your concentration and short-term memory. Plus, from the studies I've heard, it causes substantially greater physical damage than smoking cigarettes, including much higher instances of cancer. People are stupid enough as-is; they don't need chemicals to help them along with the process. I know this goes against what most of you believe, but I'm of the opinion that, if people aren't responsible enough to be able to take care of themselves, someone has to step in and do it for them.
Simply put, I think it is because humans have been making and consuming alcohol for thousands of years. In fact, some historians have argued that some of the early human hunter-gatherer groups may have shifted to a more agricultural lifestyle in order to produce beer. Alcohol has been a socially accepted drug for a very long time. I'm not saying that alcohol is any better or worse than marijuana; I'm just saying that, in most people's minds, there's much less of a stigma attached, and that makes it very easy to keep it legalized.
Hell Woodchip the clowns up here can hardly manage to register firearms much less confiscate them.
Wholesale drug usage would be bad. People are just not at their best when stoned or drunk or glazed over or whatever. I just can't see it being much worse than what we have. Tons of people smoke pot, the cities have large numbers of addicts and all this supports a huge criminal class in style. Get a doctor's prescription for your drugs. Buy them from a controlled (read taxed) source and expect to be bagered constantly to give them up and have treatment availible to those that ask for it. The whole thing would cost much less than what we spend on law enforcement, jails, insurance and losses through theft not insured.
Toppy: Concentration huh.. tell that to the rock and roll artists that created the classics you listen to. Tell that to the people who play D3 stoned and still whoop ass.
The average citizen should be allowed to get as intoxicated off his A$$ as he wants to so long as he doesnt hurt anyone directly. If he screw himself up, thats his problem, and should be his problem.
Dont give me that crap either about how society suffers as a whole from drug use. Society is suffering as a whole period. Only morons go off the high dive into it anyway, and we should just cut them off.
And you damned ultraconservatives, back off. The best way to impose your morality on people is to prove it right, so why not back off and watch as a whole bunch of hippy liberal crack smoking drug abusing morons go kill themselves off drug cocktails and stimulants. Once kids see their friends really getting messed up they'll be so scared $h!tless that they'll never wanna touch a joint again. And we should be so lucky as to have a cancerous batch of morons dying off early instead of them living long enough to pass on their idiot genes on to their idiot offspring. Hell, we should offer to pay for their funerals for saving us the time wed waste on them later on. It would all add up to dollars saved, time better spent, and a 10 point increase in the general populations IQ. Let them smoke crack.
Darwinsim. Morons die, smart people live.
Sh!t, while were at it, why not drop the drinking age down to 18 and raise the penalties for a DWI up to "I could afford to be that damned stupid only if I was Bill f*** Gates". Stop sparing the rod with these jokers who like to get plasterd and get behind the wheel.
Dammit.
Oh, and this post *is* meant to be taken seriously.
So that large numbers of otherwise usless people can be employed by the govenment thus taking them off the hands of the private sector.
It's a sort of charity project. Given the track record of this department they couldn't organize the proverbial pi** up in a brewery.
The official justification for registering guns is to control their access to those deemed unfit to buy them. If you have them fine but if you try to sell them you have to jump through a bucket of hoops. Let's face it, it is a waste of time and money. They couldn't even manage to make it a tax grab and charge more for registration than it cost to administer the stupid regulations. And the best it will achieve is if your gun is stolen and recovered in the hands of a crimnial they will be able to tell where it came from. And that is the best it can do.
Easy. it's a cash grab brought on by pressure from the feminists. the whole 'we have to register guns to keep them out of the hands of criminals and protect the children' mentality.
At the worst Ford, that money is from the RCMP budget (who as I understand, administer the program) with which the mounties could put more feet on the ground.
The red herring that registration makes the citizenry safer is shown false by the crime increase from not having the extra police patrolling and tracking down crimminals.
And that is the best it can do.