[HyperionTheEvil]

Here's my two bits.

We spend too much of our limited resources on trying to investigate, charge and try people for what is simply a ciggarette in differnt clothes. The U.S has failed in it's 'war on drugs' which has now become a generational endaevour. We dont need an antiquted law that makes smoking marijuana illegal, or posses ing it or selling it.

[HyperionTheEvil]

Dayseed wrote:

DerbyX wrote:

Why is it that when we talk about legalizing drugs and gun control people say that as long as we are next to the US our laws must compliment theirs?

We are a sovereign country. If we want to legalize drugs or outlaw guns then they have no say in the matter. If they want to pull any border shenanigans then we can always slow down trade to them in response. They won't be so quick to pull such things if their people start loosing jobs and they start paying more for goods.

I agree with your point in principle, but I also believe the reality is that when you're next to the giant, you can't ignore its farts. I think a trade-war pissing match with people on both sides losing jobs over marijuana legalization is silly.

Yes we can, especially when the giant farts we smell make no sense, gay marriage hasnt destroyed Condfedearion , we're doing just fine. In fact in eevery day real terms we're doing better then the U.S

[HyperionTheEvil]

DerbyX wrote:

ASLplease wrote:

Some people say that we should legalize drugs, gambling and prostitution and then tax the hell out of it.

But who wants their sons to shoot heroin? Who wants their daughters to be used as a sex tool to enhance government revenues?

The question then: Who wants their child to be treated as a resource to be milked by the government for revenue? Who wants to offer up their child’s body to be used for that?

Who wants their child doing porn or stripping? Thats legal. Prostitution is already legal in Canada but under certain circumstances. Most parents if not all don't want their child to smoke and thats legal.

The fact is that a lot of things are legal that could be made illegal in order to "protect us". The question is do we want to live in a society like that?

Making things legal provides protection and a means of control. Look at the US and its storied history of legal and illegal alcohol production. Moonshining is still done in the states. Hell, uncle Jesse was a moonshiner. Those Americans don't want the government telling them they can't make alcohol. At least when its legal the government has some control over the quality, sale, and distribution. As already posted many times the government takes in loads of money by taxing it and they use that money to fund schools and hospitals, money that would be made up elsewhere.

For things like prostitution it provides a measure of control and protection for the women or at least more women then currently. Look at the pron industry and the exotic dancer industry. Both are legal and governed by the same laws that govern all the other industries. Women in those fields actually are empowered to a great degree. In porn its the women who call the shots especially if they make a name for themselves and so to in stripping. Quite a few of them fully control their lives and do that job because they can make a lot of money for their families or to put themselves through school. At their job they are protected by workplace laws just as a cashier is at theirs. Illegality wouldn't stop the activity but it would put those women at the mercy of their employers because the law would not be there to protect them and might be there to prosecute them.

Legality may not eliminate all the problems but it will sure as hell minimize the bulk of them. Quite frankly illegality and a harsh penal system has failed and failed miserably. The US is a prime example. The harsher they get he worse the problem becomes. All you get is a far greater strain on the tax-payers as you need to fund more police, judges, and lawyers (we pay to defend drug dealers too). We also pay for a very expensive penal system to house them, a system that only insures that when they get out they are better and more connected criminals with no chance to go straight.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The insanity of the current war on drugs is just that. We keep trying the same thing over and over expecting that someday everybody will just throw their hands up in the air and give up. Thats not going to happen. The war is over and the law has lost. It was always going to lose because you cannot legislate morality which is entirely what the law is trying to do.

Well said

We often dont agree on things , but on this we do.

Having pointless laws to restrict the behaviour of selling, owning and using pot creates a system where it amplifies the problem, not solves it

[ridenrain]

can-aid-ian wrote:

The problem with growing your own for personal use, is that you increase your chances of being caught 100 times, and the crown will not be looking for a possession charge they will hit you not only for the growing of the plant, but then it is a seperate charge if you take a single leaf off, they get you for cultivation, and since you have a plant or two they will then go for distribution charges. So the safest way right now is to go to that illegal black market. It has nothing to do with being lazy.

I think it would be safe to say that police couldn't really be bothered if you grew small quantities of pot for you're own consumption. We're really not seeing all these old ladies who grow their own pot going to jail.
What we are hearing is the large operations getting busted because their a money maker for organized crime.

[Lemmy]

ridenrain wrote:

I think it would be safe to say that police couldn't really be bothered if you grew small quantities of pot for you're own consumption. We're really not seeing all these old ladies who grow their own pot going to jail.
What we are hearing is the large operations getting busted because their a money maker for organized crime.

The cops don't get to make those decisions, only parliament does. While it may be true that the police aren't going out of their way to find people with personal-use pot, if they find it on you, you're going to be charged. I don't know what the numbers are for 2009, but approximately 50,000 Canadians were convicted for simple possession last year.

[Choban]

Lemmy wrote:

ridenrain wrote:

I think it would be safe to say that police couldn't really be bothered if you grew small quantities of pot for you're own consumption. We're really not seeing all these old ladies who grow their own pot going to jail.
What we are hearing is the large operations getting busted because their a money maker for organized crime.

The cops don't get to make those decisions, only parliament does. While it may be true that the police aren't going out of their way to find people with personal-use pot, if they find it on you, you're going to be charged. I don't know what the numbers are for 2009, but approximately 50,000 Canadians were convicted for simple possession last year.

I had a friend, his situation I'm sure is NOT UNIQUE. His room mate was driving drunk and hit a bus stop. He parked the truck in the alley, about an hour later the cops showed up at his door.
Long story short, the cops entered his residence, my friend has dreadlocks and a decidedly "Hippyish" appearance. so they started snooping around and discovered 3 plants in his closet.
Final charge (which was dismissed by the way), Cultivation for the purpose of trafficking. 3 plants, ha, nice try.
Their justification for the charge was a jar full of shake that he had put aside to make oil out of.
He had the charges dismissed, which cost him a pretty heafty leagal bill. But for months and months afterward he was subjected to random visits from the boys in blue.

[Dayseed]

Scape wrote:

Dayseed wrote:

Quote:

Oxycodone, cocaine and opium are schedule II. Can anyone make a credible argument why MJ is not listed with them?

That's not Canadian. In Canada, marijuana is schedule II under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act; meth, coke and heroin are all Schedule I.

Giant farts you say? Their policy has effect on our rule of law. State by state the law is changing but the policy itself is not one based on science but rather dogma. The shift from schedule I to II underscores that as unsustainable as the drug has not changed but culture and society norms have. Frankly, the argument against is simply inconsistent.

No arguments here. It's hard to come up with rational arguments that marijuana is so demonstrably worse than alcohol, it should be illegal while keeping alcohol legal.

[Dayseed]

HyperionTheEvil wrote:

Dayseed wrote:

DerbyX wrote:

Why is it that when we talk about legalizing drugs and gun control people say that as long as we are next to the US our laws must compliment theirs?

We are a sovereign country. If we want to legalize drugs or outlaw guns then they have no say in the matter. If they want to pull any border shenanigans then we can always slow down trade to them in response. They won't be so quick to pull such things if their people start loosing jobs and they start paying more for goods.

I agree with your point in principle, but I also believe the reality is that when you're next to the giant, you can't ignore its farts. I think a trade-war pissing match with people on both sides losing jobs over marijuana legalization is silly.

Yes we can, especially when the giant farts we smell make no sense, gay marriage hasnt destroyed Condfedearion , we're doing just fine. In fact in eevery day real terms we're doing better then the U.S

But unless the Americans start stopping border flow because they're looking for smuggled married gays, your point and mine are apples and oranges.

Also, I think I'm on to something here when I refer to unsightly American policy wafting up here and choking us as Giant Farts.

[Dayseed]

ridenrain wrote:

can-aid-ian wrote:

The problem with growing your own for personal use, is that you increase your chances of being caught 100 times, and the crown will not be looking for a possession charge they will hit you not only for the growing of the plant, but then it is a seperate charge if you take a single leaf off, they get you for cultivation, and since you have a plant or two they will then go for distribution charges. So the safest way right now is to go to that illegal black market. It has nothing to do with being lazy.

I think it would be safe to say that police couldn't really be bothered if you grew small quantities of pot for you're own consumption. We're really not seeing all these old ladies who grow their own pot going to jail.
What we are hearing is the large operations getting busted because their a money maker for organized crime.

True. The Molson plant (bam!) in Barrie is an example of a cop's wet dream of finding, not some idiot who's got a few plants in his closet and tokes up playing Halo 3.

[ridenrain]

Choban wrote:

I had a friend, his situation I'm sure is NOT UNIQUE. His room mate was driving drunk and hit a bus stop. He parked the truck in the alley, about an hour later the cops showed up at his door.
Long story short, the cops entered his residence, my friend has dreadlocks and a decidedly "Hippyish" appearance. so they started snooping around and discovered 3 plants in his closet.
Final charge (which was dismissed by the way), Cultivation for the purpose of trafficking. 3 plants, ha, nice try.
Their justification for the charge was a jar full of shake that he had put aside to make oil out of.
He had the charges dismissed, which cost him a pretty heafty leagal bill. But for months and months afterward he was subjected to random visits from the boys in blue.

What did you expect? It dosen't take a criminologist to see that folks who cause trouble often do so in a bunch of different ways.

It's not like cops have the time and patience to follow pot smokers home and look in their windows. There's even a waiting list for grow op busts in BC and anything that big to be noticed by the neighbors is organized crime.

[Choban]

ridenrain wrote:

Choban wrote:

I had a friend, his situation I'm sure is NOT UNIQUE. His room mate was driving drunk and hit a bus stop. He parked the truck in the alley, about an hour later the cops showed up at his door.
Long story short, the cops entered his residence, my friend has dreadlocks and a decidedly "Hippyish" appearance. so they started snooping around and discovered 3 plants in his closet.
Final charge (which was dismissed by the way), Cultivation for the purpose of trafficking. 3 plants, ha, nice try.
Their justification for the charge was a jar full of shake that he had put aside to make oil out of.
He had the charges dismissed, which cost him a pretty heafty leagal bill. But for months and months afterward he was subjected to random visits from the boys in blue.

What did you expect? It dosen't take a criminologist to see that folks who cause trouble often do so in a bunch of different ways.

It's not like cops have the time and patience to follow pot smokers home and look in their windows. There's even a waiting list for grow op busts in BC and anything that big to be noticed by the neighbors is organized crime.

Trouble in lots of different ways? This man had never in his life even been arrested (or done anything to warrant an arrest)until his room mate made a stupid mistake.
He got off by claiming personal use and the judge threw the case out because the cops had no probable cause other than his appearance to search his premisis.
Then to have the gall to randomly stop by his house for no reason other than fishing for him to mess up and give them another reason to check out inside, this behavior went on for months.
I think in this caes they had too much time on their hands. He even considered filing a harassment suit against the district office. In the end he moved due to differences with the room mate, that's when the cops stopped visiting him for no reason.

[Scape]

I don't like the idea of a fishing expedition by police to ferret out criminals because that has the potential to create criminals out of the innocent. To say he didn't get caught before doesn't make the possession any less of a crime on the books. The issues of entrapment muddies the waters because it encroaches upon the grounds of reasonable doubt. The defence could argue that there is a bias by the police against rastafarians. As that is as much of a judgment call as the one by the officers to search his closet in the 1st place it ends up being an issue of whose word can you take at face value and in the court you can't take sides so the judge would have to throw this out of court.

Would that defence stand if he was driving a car and they pulled him over at a drunk driving/speeding checkpoint and the trunk had the same plants? No, but he would have had to come to the cops and not the cops coming to his residence and that's the only thing that saved him here. The fact is he still broke the law by holding known contraband.

[Choban]

Scape, theres no doubt he broke the law, possesion is a crime, but he's not a gangster, hes not selling to kids and hes not robbing stores to support a heavy drug habit.
He is one man that decided to grow enough pot for himself to smoke without buying off of orientals/jamaicans/arabs and fueling the gangs and terrorist networks that profit from large scale grow ops.
Given the yeild of smokable substance aquired off of these 3 plants he was able to plead personal use and charges were dismissed (also including the probable cause to search his house in the first place), leagalization or even decriminalization would have prevented the whole fiasco and save him and taxpayers whatever it cost to try and prosecute him.
This person is a great human being, compasionate, voting, tax paying, hard working, blue collar individual that happens to partake in the consumtion of a plant.
The fishing by the way didn't happen until after the fact, charges dropped and 2 cops with a chip on their shoulders about a lost court case against someone that ordinarily wouldn't have run afoul of them, it was dumb luck and stupidity of his roommate that caused the whole situation.
I'm not sure in terms of $ how much the city police and provincial courts spent to attempt this prosecution, or how much the cops make an hour to snoop around his house multiple times a week but his leagal fees ran about $5000, I can only imagine that the tax payers $ could have been better spent, say on the gang task force or investigations agains child molesters.