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LIBERALS PLAN TO DECRIMINALIZE MARIJUANA

Something unnerving is taking place in Canada. Without any obvious reason for doing so, the federal Liberal government is slowly moving to decriminalize marijuana, and the question one must ask is: Why? From where is the pressure coming?

We do know that one source of pressure is the well-financed drug liberalization movement centred in the United States. One such organization is the Lindesmith Center, the New York based think-tank funded by billionaire, George Soros. Other sources in the US are wealthy Peter Lewis, CEO of Cleveland based Progressive Corp., and the equally wealthy John Sperling, President of the Apollo Group. There is no question that millions of their dollars are rolling into Canada - some being used to establish the pro-liberalization drug groups which are springing up here. Representatives of these groups have appeared as witnesses before the House of Commons Committee to Review Illicit Drugs and the Senate Committee on Illicit Drugs.

REAL Women also appeared as a witness before these two parliamentary committees in May and June. It was clear to us that these government committees have been set up to reach a pro-legalization conclusion. For example, not one question was raised by these committees as to why the drug laws are not being enforced in Canada. Instead, the Committee members directed their questions to the intolerance and narrowness of those who are not open to the so-called "advantages" of decriminalization, and the so-called "dangers" to the law caused by the public's alleged failure to respect it.

At this time, one can only speculate as to who else, apart from these pro-liberalization organizations, has received funding from wealthy American sources to encourage the legalization of the drug laws in Canada.

We do know, for certain, that the campaign to liberalize Canada's drug laws is taking shape, step by step, by the Liberal government. It is being kept deliberately low-key and incremental so that the public will not become alarmed. We have definite knowledge about the policy change because of the following facts:

1. July 1999, in the case of Parker vs Attorney General of Canada, the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered the use of marijuana for medical purposes, although there was no finding of fact that marijuana is useful as medical treatment. In this regard, the Court of Appeal ignored the finding of the lower court that the use of marijuana is conducive to pulmonary (lung) disease. The legal challenge was brought by a marijuana smoker who argued that he required marijuana to treat his epilepsy.

2. The decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal was not appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. Even though the government was not bound by a provincial court decision (only that of the Supreme Court of Canada), Mr. Rock, the then Minister of Health, nonetheless immediately agreed to amend the regulations, pursuant to S.56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, to allow the use of marijuana for purposes of medical treatment.

3. Since Cabinet Ministers do not act independently in the tightly controlled Chrétien government, it is not unreasonable to assume that the failure to appeal the Ontario Court of Appeal decision was authorized by the Prime Minister's Office, indicating an intention on the part of the Liberal government to change its policy on marijuana use.

4. In December 2000, Health Canada and Public Works and Government Services Canada announced that a competitive $5.7 million contract had been awarded to the Saskatoon company, Prairie Plant Systems, to grow marijuana on behalf of the federal government in an abandoned copper mine in Flin Flon, Manitoba.

5. On April 7, 2001, Mr. Rock released the proposed regulations for the medicinal use of marijuana. These came into effect in July 2001. These regulations permit the use of marijuana as medical treatment for a wide variety of illnesses, ranging from terminal and debilitating illnesses, and relief of symptoms such as nausea, headache, backache, etc.

6. In April 2002, the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Medical Protective Association advised physicians not to sign medical forms approving patient requests for marijuana for medical treatment. The physicians stated that marijuana has not undergone rigorous testing such as that required by other pharmaceutical products, and that there is no research to support the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

7. On May 7, 2002, the recently appointed Minister of Health, Anne McLellan, announced that the crop grown by the government in Flin Flon contained 185 different varieties of marijuana with varying potencies and impurities, and therefore, it could not be distributed to patients or used for research purposes for clinical trials. She stated, however, that the crop would be used to obtain a "quality standardized seed", which would be used in the government's second crop. Officials in the US enforcement agency had refused to give seeds to Mr. Rock, former Minister of Health, and therefore, seeds for the crop he used were obtained from the police who had confiscated them during the course of law enforcement efforts.

8. In February 2001, The UN International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) criticized Canada for its failure to prohibit the illegal growth and sale of marijuana in Canada - 60% of which is now being sold in the US by way of the internet. The INCB also criticized Canadian courts for treating commercial marijuana cultivation as a minor offence, by handing out such penalties as minimal jail time or fines of no more than $2,000.

9. In February 2001, the Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, in her Report, Chapter 11, on Illicit Drugs, reported that there was a fundamental failure in leadership and coordination in Canada regarding the implementation of Canada's drug policies. She specifically referred to sparse information, lack of resources and the lack of enforcement in regard to the upholding of Canada's drug policy established in 1992. This drug policy established that it was to provide a balanced approach to reducing both the demand for drugs and their supply through; (1), control and enforcement; (2), prevention and education; and (3), treatment and rehabilitation.

10. The government's response to the Auditor General's Report was to establish a Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs and a House of Commons Special Committee on the non-medical use of drugs.

11. The Mandate of the Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs is to: "develop a national harm reduction policy in order to lessen the negative impact of illegal drugs in Canada …" Harm reduction is a creative renaming for the dismantling of the laws restricting the sale and use of drugs. It is not possible to reduce the harm caused by drug use by making drugs more widely available. That is, drugs cannot be taken without consequences. The reality is that harm comes from the drugs themselves not, as alleged euphemistically by proponents of "harm reduction", from how and where they are administrated. Harm reduction policy is based on the proposition that because drug use is hard to stop, we should learn to live with the non-medical use of drugs. This is simply sweeping drug abuse under the rug and avoiding our responsibility to keep people off drugs.

The basic problem is that drug use increases always and everywhere when drugs are available without legal sanction. In short, the law serves as a deterrent. To many, what is legal becomes acceptable and once legal sanctions are removed, there is a greatly increased use of drugs. The Senate Committee's mandate reflects an intent to consider instituting so-called "harm reduction", decriminalization, as a core philosophy. To further this objective, it is noted that the preponderance of listed witnesses appearing before the Senate Committee advocate decriminalization and/or legalization of illegal drugs.

12. On May 2, 2002, Senator Pierre Claude Nolan, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs, issued an interim report in which he stated that marijuana is not a so-called "gateway" drug to hard drug use, and that efforts to prevent marijuana use are having little impact on young Canadians. The completed report is to be tabled in September 2002.

In addition, it is well known that Canada is failing to enforce our current drug laws. For example, Inspector Kash Heed, Commanding Officer of Vancouver's Police Department's Drug Section, stated on November 7, 2001 before the Senate Committee on Illicit Drug Use, that for all practical purposes, police in his area have stopped arresting people for possession, whether the drug is hashish, cocaine or a designer drug. According to Inspector Heed, the failure to enforce the law developed because Canadian courts are handing down light sentences or even absolute discharges for possession. His evidence was corroborated by RCMP S/Sgt. Dowhayko, who is in charge of the Windsor, Ontario drug section detachment. In his testimony before the Senate Committee on June 7, 2002, S/Sgt. Dowhayko stated that no charges are being laid for possession of marijuana anywhere within his area either. A similar policy appears to exist throughout Canada. According to Statistics Canada 2000, only 0.8 individuals were charged with heroin possession each day over the last decade. On average, each day in Canada, 9.4 individuals were charged with cocaine possession and 68.2% were charged with cannabis possession throughout the entire country.

However, according to the Auditor General in his Report on Illicit Drugs tabled in February 2001, there are no statistics available as to the number of actual convictions of drug possession.

Commercial Cultivation of Marijuana

The growing of marijuana, especially in the provinces of Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia, is so prevalent that it is now displacing, in the US, brands entering that country from Colombia and Mexico. Canada's hydroponic "grow ops" are being run with ruthless efficiency and have been taken over in alarming numbers by organized crime.

Shootings, bombings and other attacks are evidence of this. For example, police officials and representatives from the Canadian Criminal Intelligence Service met at the end of May with MPs from the Toronto area to brief them about the growing problems such as execution-style slayings that are occurring in the York and Peel regions because of the marijuana grow houses springing up. (There are an estimated 10,000 grow houses in these areas alone.)

Police officials told the MPs that individuals charged with operating marijuana grow houses are essentially rewarded with limited penalties for pleading guilty in court. This lack of deterrence is the cause of the problem, according to the police, and there has to be a tightening up of the administration of the law. Similar problems are also taking place in Vancouver, as evidenced by the number of execution-style murders taking place there.

Hydroponically grown marijuana in houses is substantially more potent than anything grown outdoors. Levels of THC - the compound that gives pot its "punch" - average 15 - 20% in the standard hydroponic marijuana grown in BC. Ultra strains top out at THC levels of 30%. By contrast, the marijuana produced in Latin America has an average THC content of only 6%. Even Jamaica's strongest rarely reaches 12%.

As a result, Canada is building a reputation as a safe place for legal drug use because we are treating even commercial cultivation of marijuana as a minor offence, rather than handing out fines of more than $2,000.

BC's Organized Crime Agency estimates that in that province the illegal growing operations produce $6 billion worth of marijuana annually.

Due to the unprecedented amount of marijuana pouring over the border into the US, (a tenfold increase between 1998 - 2000) the US State Department considered placing Canada on its narcotics black list last year, alongside Burma and Afghanistan. It was only diplomatic pressure from Ottawa that prevented this from occurring.

Further, the UN International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which monitors drug use world-wide, in its report released on February 20, 2001, criticized Canada for its lax attitude toward the possession of cannabis and for its failure to control production of synthetic drugs, such as "ice" and ecstasy.

The report stated that Canadian courts have been issuing sentences to cannabis growers and couriers that essentially amount to a slap on the wrist. Herbert Schaepe, Secretary of the INCB, stated that the lenient Canadian sentences issued are not serving as a deterrent. He went on to say, "The Board is not happy with controls established in Canada." According to this UN report, Canada's annual cannabis production is about 800 tonnes - 60% of which may be smuggled into the US.

The Mystery of Canada's
Reluctance to Enforce the Law

It is indeed mysterious why Canada is not enforcing its drug laws. Instead, there appears to be a deliberate policy of allowing the drug problem to fester and grow, to create an environment for change, i.e. to permit the decriminalization of the marijuana laws on the alleged grounds that the law is "unenforceable".

Further, a decision has also apparently been made to decrease funding in Canada for prevention programs, such as education in the schools and for treatment centres. This is deeply disturbing. Who gave the order for this deliberate policy of neglect?

Justice Minister Cauchon
Announces the Obvious

In view of the above, it came as no surprise to us, the announcement by Martin Cauchon, Minister of Justice on July 15, 2002, that his government is now considering the loosening up of Canada's marijuana laws, possibly by decriminalizing simple possession of the drug.

Naturally, he gave as his reasons that our present system was not "efficient". It encouraged a patchwork of criminal charges across the country. In effect, Mr. Cauchon has stated that the law is not being evenly enforced across the country, and the way to handle this is not to enforce the law properly (Heaven forbid!), but rather the law should be decriminalized so as to hand offenders a fine akin to a traffic ticket rather than criminally charging them. This is a dramatic change in outlook for Mr. Cauchon, who just last year, told us that society was not ready for decriminalizing the law. What could have possibly induced him to change his mind?

The Result of Decriminalizing Marijuana

Canadians need only look at the situation in the Netherlands, which established a very liberal drug law in 1976, and Switzerland in the mid-eighties, to know what lies ahead for us if the drug laws are liberalized in Canada. Swiss adolescents now use more drugs per capita than their counterparts any other country in Western Europe, and the number of cannabis users among students in the Netherlands increased 250% when that country liberalized its law. Is this what we want in Canada? In contrast, Sweden, in the late 1970's, enacted a "get tough" policy on drugs. As a result, that country changed from one with the worst rate of drug use in Europe to, after 15 years, the European country with the lowest rate of drug use.

Marijuana Use is Hazardous

Those who claim that there is no evidence that marijuana use is hazardous or addictive have clearly not taken an opportunity to research the literature on the subject. Anyone wishing to do so can find well-conducted studies (pharmacological and epidemiological) showing the hazards of marijuana use.

For example, an article in Paediatrics Journal (1998) stated:

Marijuana is an addictive, mind-altering drug capable of inducing dependency …. Marijuana should not be considered an innocuous drug …. There is little doubt that marijuana intoxication contributes substantially to accidental deaths and injuries amongst adolescents. …

A 1999 study, reported in the medical journal Cancer Epidemiology, Bidmaker and Prevention by Leo Zhang Zxuo-Feng, Los Angeles School of Medicine at the University of California, indicates that the risk of head and neck cancer is 2.6 times greater among marijuana smokers.

Recent studies indicate that smoking marijuana leads to pulmonary damage and interferes with concentration, memory, motor skills and motivation. (This is especially serious for adolescents as it leads to lower school performance).

Such results are not surprising since marijuana contains approximately 480 substances that become combustible when smoked, producing in turn more than 2,000 impure chemicals. The main ingredient in marijuana is THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). In the 1950's, the THC potency usually ranged from ½% to 1% or 2%, but because marijuana gains potency when grown hydroponically, using heavily fertilized water, powerful lights, heat and humidity, the THC content has greatly increased to 15% - 20% in the standard hydroponically grown marijuana, which predominates today. Since THC remains in the body for at least a week (depending on its potency), and contains many more carcinogens, is heavily inhaled and held in the lungs longer than cigarettes since, it is far more dangerous than tobacco.

It should not be overlooked, too, that to decriminalize marijuana use would be to violate the UN's International Conventions on Drugs and other UN agreements that Canada has ratified. These include the Convention on Narcotics Drugs (1961); the Convention on Psychotropic Substance (1971) and, Convention Against the Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (1988). Over the years the UN General Assembly has also adopted Resolutions and Declarations on Drug Use. For example, in 2000, Canada signed the UN's Palermo Declaration in which Canada agreed to reject all efforts to legalize drugs and so-called "harm reduction ideologies and practices."

According to the provisions of these UN Conventions, the ratifying countries are required to ban the use of mind-altering drugs taken for non-medical reasons, and to impose and enforce appropriate sanctions. Cannabis is among the prohibited substances referred to in these UN Conventions.

Why is Canada so enthusiastic about applying UN treaties promoting feminism, abortion, and contraception for adolescents without parental knowledge and consent, but so willing to ignore the treaties prohibiting the liberalization of illicit drugs? The word "hypocrisy" comes to mind. We should reasonably ask why the Liberal government is moving toward the decriminalization of marijuana and so-called hard drugs, such as heroin, with its plan to operate a free heroin injection site in Vancouver. Such a policy makes no sense, especially when tobacco use is now being so actively discouraged by the government. What is the political reason behind this?

According to US Congressman, J. Dennis Hastert, Chairman of the US Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs and Criminal Justice:

… Proponents of drug legalization are, at best, a dangerous and misguided crowd. For many, it is an elaborate game, a way to retaliate against those who condemn drug-using behaviour. For others, legalization is a means of achieving other ends - undermining moral values and democratic institutions, turning profits by expanding the user population, or creating new industries around the maintenance of addiction.

Whatever the motivation, drug legalization is wrong-headed and destined to hurt those societies which indulge the instinct to experiment with the most vulnerable segments of their population, including their children. …

Please write to the following to strongly oppose the decriminalization of marijuana and the liberalization of the use of all other illicit drugs:

The Rt. Hon. Jean Chrétien, PC, MP
Prime Minister's Office
80 Wellington St., 2nd Floor
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A2
Tel. (613) 992-4211
Fax: (613) 941-6900

The Hon. Martin Cauchon, PC, MP
Minister of Justice
Justice Building
284 Wellington St.
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H8
Tel: (613) 992-4621
Fax: (613) 990-7255

The Hon. Ms. Anne McLellan, PC, MP
Minister of Health
Brooke Claxton Bldg.
Address Locator 0916 A
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0K9
Tel: (613) 957-0200
Fax: (613) 952-1154

Mr. Stephen Harper, CA, MP
Alliance Party Leader
Centre Block, Room 409S
111 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6
Tel: (613) 996-9740
Fax: (613) 947-0310

Your MP
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6

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