California may be going to pot - literally.

Marijuana would be grown and sold openly to adults 21 and older under legislation introduced this morning by a San Francisco lawmaker.

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, said the cash-starved state could generate more than a billion dollars by taxing pot growers and sellers.

Ammiano predicted that the public would support loosening marijuana laws that require substantial public funds to enforce.

"I think there's a mentality throughout the state and the country that this isn't the highest priority," he said. "And that maybe we should start to reassess."

Before California could legalize marijuana, however, it also might have to persuade the federal government to alter its prohibition on cannabis.

Ammiano said federal officials may be receptive to such changes under the administration of President Barack Obama.

"We may be on a parallel track here," said Ammiano, a freshman legislator who was sworn into office less than three months ago.

The Drug Policy Alliance, an advocate of loosening pot laws, applauded Ammiano's proposal.

Take the profit out of their murderous business. Make drugs legal.

By Rafe Mair
Published: February 23, 2009

TheTyee.ca

"The War on drugs fails, and is doomed to perpetual failure, because it is directed not against the root causes of drug addiction and of the international black market in drugs, but only against some drug producers, traffickers and users... the War is doomed because neither the methods of war nor the war idiom itself is appropriate to a complex social problem that calls for compassion, self-searching insight and factually researched scientific understanding."

-- Dr. Gabor Mate, well known Vancouver physician and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.

In the early 1930s, The United States was moving towards repealing Prohibition.

In the New Yorker appeared a cartoon that showed a large truck, obviously laden with contraband booze, sailing down the highway with a bumper sticker that said "DON'T REPEAL, ENFORCE." The booze criminals obviously had more reason to see alcohol prohibited than did the Women's Christian Temperance Union, who started it all back in the mid 1800s when Carry Nation busted up saloons with her trusty axe.

During the period of Prohibition, more liquor was sold than ever before. Smuggling liquor became an art form that made several Vancouver men rich, vaulting them to the top of the social ladder.

I have now been on this planet a remarkable number of years considering how I spent my youth and early manhood and thus have watched the drug scene since the 1940s. Then, the byword was "enforce." As, lamentably, it's been ever since.

In all those years, the only thing that hasn't been tried has been legalization or decriminalization.

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Besotted hypocrites

Our society is, of course, as hypocritical as hell as it peddles well-advertised alcohol, the most dangerous of all drugs. The cost of alcohol to society is in the billions and even then things like broken homes, single parent families, costs to business operations and so on make it impossible to even come up with an educated guess at the real cost of booze to society. Yet no one seriously says we should go back to Prohibition and bring back the illegal stills, bootleggers, rum runners and dives or speakeasies that do so well when their product is illegal.

Logically, the legalization or, at least, decriminalization of drugs makes sense. The beneficiaries of our present system are criminals, the same criminals in large measure who are responsible for the ubiquitous shootings in Vancouver reminiscent of Chicago of the 1920s. The cost of enforcing drug laws, according to research, is mind boggling.

Federally, 11 departments and agencies spend approximately $500 million annually to address illicit drug use in Canada.

Since 1997, most of the government's legislative changes related to illicit drugs have focused on supply reduction (enforcement), not demand reduction.

While estimates vary, the United Nations believes that the annual global sales of illicit drugs are between $450 billion and $750 billion. In Canada, the government's estimates of sales range from $7 billion to $18 billion.

For the roughly 50,000 persons charged, 90 per cent of the charges related to cannabis and cocaine. Cannabis accounted for more than two thirds of the charges, and about half of all charges were for possession.

An estimated 125,000 people in Canada inject drugs. The economic costs, including health care (for example, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis), lost productivity, property crime and enforcement, are estimated to exceed $5 billion annually.

Let me pause here and say that hard numbers are difficult to assess but I quote the above to give readers some idea of what we're spending in public money.

God considers cannabis "good" and God's law is the ultimate authority, not the courts.

That was just one of the novel arguments put forward by former Maple Ridge mayoral candidate and Guilty Pleasures sex shop owner William Perry at his sentencing hearing this week.

"By God's word, which is in fact the ultimate authority, cannabis marijuana is a fruit producing, seed bearing plant that God says is good," said Perry at Wednesday's sentencing.

Perry also told the judge that he only sold marijuana to the customers, who later turned out to be undercover cops, out of a compassionate desire to help them avoid marijuana laced with harder drugs, which street level drug dealers often sell.

"They will approach an individual like a wounded duck crying the blues about how scared they are that the marijuana they're smoking, and have been smoking for a period of time...is more than likely laced with drugs that they'd rather not be a part of," he said. "When you care about people and you know that they're at risk -- I myself once or twice a week would medicinally use recreational marijuana that I knew was of a clean, natural, organic source that was well taken care of and loved and nurtured -- that they were probably better off and safer if I were to help them so as not to have them go down the street as they said they would and go and buy it off someone they'd already adamantly told me they were scared of."

However, provincial court judge Pedro de Couto was unconvinced of the merits of Perry's arguments and sentenced him to 24 months in jail on three counts of drug trafficking and one count of possession for the purpose of trafficking.

Perry was convicted of selling drugs to undercover cops on four occasions in April and May of 2008 out of Guilty Pleasures. It was his second conviction for drug trafficking. Perry was also previously found guilty of selling drugs to undercover police officers out of his sex shop in 2005.

de Couto said he recognized that Perry has a "philosophy about marijuana use" and that he's an advocate for decriminalization. de Couto commented that Perry uses the Bible as "both a sword and a shield." de Couto said "there's no question Canada was founded on Christian principles" but he asked Perry to consider something Jesus said from the Bible: 'Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.'

"Clearly he suggested that citizens respect the laws of the state as well as those of God," said de Couto.

Once the drug of choice with hippies and burnouts, marijuana is joining fine wine on the list of indulgences with serious snob appeal. 

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Clarification demanded on where medicinal marijuana smokers can light up

http://www.canada.com/news/national/Clarification+demanded+medicinal+marijuana/1267095/story.html


By Jordana Huber,
Canwest News Service
TORONTO -- A restaurant owner facing a discrimination complaint for asking a medical
marijuana smoker not to light up outside his business says Ottawa needs to step in and
clarify its regulations governing where authorized permit holders can smoke.

Ted Kindos, owner of Gator Ted's Tap and Grill in Burlington, Ont., says he will ask the
Federal Court to require Health Canada to expressly condition any medical marijuana
permits upon compliance with provincial liquor licensing laws.