[Curtman]

Decriminalizing pot could help squelch gang rivalry, add to tax coffers

Quote:

Many long-suffering Winnipeggers, so used to whining about their misfortune, are wearing sloppy smiles on their faces.
But there are plenty of people who aren't having a great summer in this city. For starters, the arson epidemic has kept people up too many nights in Fort Rouge, St. James and elsewhere.
Even worse, we've had enough gang violence in Winnipeg this summer to rattle even the cynics who've become blasé about the existence of organized groups of heavily armed, highly anti-social criminals.
If the auto-shop and tattoo-parlour incidents didn't do it, the triple shooting in the Transcona garage probably did the trick. So yet again, we have assurances from the police they are monitoring the bad guys, which they are, along with the usual banal utterings from politicians.
And this brings me to the belated point of today's not-so-sunny column: When will this country -- not the city or the province but Canada as a whole -- get serious about cracking down on gangs by depriving them of their primary source of income?
Back in 1919, when Prohibition was enacted in the U.S., our American friends learned a valuable lesson about supply and demand: Criminalize a substance almost everyone wants and you create a burgeoning black market.
By the time Prohibition was repealed in 1933, organized and often violent criminal gangs had grown fat off booze profits. Although gangs failed to disappear after Prohibition ended, they did have to pursue more difficult lines of work, as racketeering and smuggling did not yield the quick, easy profits of peddling intoxicating contraband.
About 35 years later, there was a new prohibition. The 1960s counterculture spawned a drug hysteria centred around marijuana, which many young people tried, and LSD, which few actually did.
In the U.S., then-president Richard Nixon responded in 1971 to the moral panic by famously declaring a war on drugs. The Canadian response was far more sober: We launched the Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs, headed up by law-school dean Gerald Le Dain, who concluded in 1972 that marijuana should be decriminalized.
Generations of Canadian leaders have considered taking Le Dain's advice. Pierre Trudeau made noises in the late '70s but didn't follow through. Jean Chrétien took a few baby steps in the mid-1990s, only to stop short at the behest of a U.S. already annoyed with the influx of Canadian weed.
The B.C. marijuana industry, ironically, sprung into high gear following the second U.S. war on drugs, launched by Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980s when the flow of cheap and -- by today's standards, weak -- marijuana from Mexico was squelched.
Today, Stephen Harper's Conservatives talk tough on crime. But Ottawa has little interest in decriminalization, despite pleas from police officials who would love nothing more than to deprive organized crime of the income they earn from the production, sale and distribution of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs.
In North America today, we do not have a war on drugs. To borrow a phrase from American author Charles Bowden, who has written extensively about the violence in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, this continent is engaged in a war for drugs.
In Juarez, Bowden writes, there's no way to discern the difference between criminal gangs and law-enforcement agencies. The Mexican police and military appear to be fighting with gangs and each other for control of the profits from the drugs distributed in Mexico, as well as exported to the U.S. and Canada.
Winnipeg is hardly Juarez, where thousands of homicides take place every year. But our gangs clearly profit enough from the sale of marijuana and cocaine to warrant the risk of trying to kill each other.
The solution to this mess is obvious, if politically unpalatable: take control of the drug trade away from the gangs. Decriminalize marijuana and possibly even legalize it. Then tax the bejesus out of it, like we do with alcohol and tobacco. Also control the flow of cocaine, which is not physically addictive, through methadone-like treatment programs.
Gangs will still try to sell drugs and find other ways to make money. They will continue to force young women into prostitution. They may even mimic their American counterparts by turning to more white-collar forms of organized crime.
Decriminalization won't make gangs disappear, but it will deprive them of the easy money that drives them to compete with each other so violently. It would also allow police to spend less time and money busting illegal grow operations.
To be more blunt, it isn't fair to ask police to fight gangs we effectively arm by maintaining misguided policies. But decriminalization won't be easy, as the concept makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
But if we are brave, we can get tough on gangs by taking aim at their wallets.
And maybe someday, the biggest summer annoyance will be the acrid smell of weed -- and the pizza pops the neighbour's idiot kid keeps microwaving after he lights up.

[Guy_Fawkes]

All they will do is just switch the product they deal in. Instead of pot it will be meth, or cocaine, or Vicodin. Decriminalizing it will just keep pot smokers out of jail, it will not put the hurt on drug dealers.

[Curtman]

Guy_Fawkes wrote:

All they will do is just switch the product they deal in. Instead of pot it will be meth, or cocaine, or Vicodin. Decriminalizing it will just keep pot smokers out of jail, it will not put the hurt on drug dealers.

Switch? They're already profiting from those in addition to pot. The market for them is much smaller though. The pot smokers are already out of jail. I've never heard of anyone going to jail for possession of marijuana here.

[jeff744]

Curtman wrote:

Guy_Fawkes wrote:

All they will do is just switch the product they deal in. Instead of pot it will be meth, or cocaine, or Vicodin. Decriminalizing it will just keep pot smokers out of jail, it will not put the hurt on drug dealers.

Switch? They're already profiting from those in addition to pot. The market for them is much smaller though. The pot smokers are already out of jail. I've never heard of anyone going to jail for possession of marijuana here.

In Vancouver there were some neighborhoods that were completely turned around by legalizing pot. They used to be drug traders everywhere in one location but when pot shops opened up the traders were basically completely gone.

[Guy_Fawkes]

Curtman wrote:

Guy_Fawkes wrote:

All they will do is just switch the product they deal in. Instead of pot it will be meth, or cocaine, or Vicodin. Decriminalizing it will just keep pot smokers out of jail, it will not put the hurt on drug dealers.

Switch? They're already profiting from those in addition to pot. The market for them is much smaller though. The pot smokers are already out of jail. I've never heard of anyone going to jail for possession of marijuana here.

You know what I mean, legalizing pot will do very little to disrupt the black market.

[jeff744]

Guy_Fawkes wrote:

Curtman wrote:

Guy_Fawkes wrote:

All they will do is just switch the product they deal in. Instead of pot it will be meth, or cocaine, or Vicodin. Decriminalizing it will just keep pot smokers out of jail, it will not put the hurt on drug dealers.

Switch? They're already profiting from those in addition to pot. The market for them is much smaller though. The pot smokers are already out of jail. I've never heard of anyone going to jail for possession of marijuana here.

You know what I mean, legalizing pot will do very little to disrupt the black market.

It will still be a kick in the nuts to them, they are losing a lot of people that only use pot.

[Curtman]

Guy_Fawkes wrote:

You know what I mean, legalizing pot will do very little to disrupt the black market.

If pot and prostitution were regulated and taxed we would save the money that is wasted every year enforcing their prohibition, and the revenue that currently goes to gangsters would go to government. Nothing would change for you and I except lower our taxes, but the black market would be a lot smaller and less profitable.

[Guy_Fawkes]

jeff744 wrote:

It will still be a kick in the nuts to them, they are losing a lot of people that only use pot.

Im not so sure, at most it will make them lower the prices for other drugs, or find a way to produce them much cheaper. You will end up seeing more meth heads and less pot heads.

Curtmen does make a good point, if we exploit peoples vices by levying taxes upon them we will be able to give more funding for government projects.

[DanSC]

I don't think legalizing pot will end pot smuggling, mostly because cigarette smuggling is a huge business down here.

[Wada]

Daily doses of good pot for every person on earth should be mandatory.

[Unsound]

Wada wrote:

Daily doses of good pot for every person on earth should be mandatory.

I don't see how making me spend the rest of my life on the look out for the ninjas that stalk me whem I'm high does any good for the world.

[desertdude]

A little off topic and a bit naive, even stupid I guess but why are so many people into drugs anyway ? Always chasing the next high ? I seriously don't get it.

And whats with you Canadians and pot anyways !

Everytime my friend comes down from Canada, he keeps on insiting I just GOTTA try it !

[andyt]

DanSC wrote:

I don't think legalizing pot will end pot smuggling, mostly because cigarette smuggling is a huge business down here.

What is the percentage of illegal/legal cig sales? Are you willing to concede a similar situation would arise with pot? What is the current tax revenue on pot vs tobacco? Do you think if pot was legalized and regulated tax revenues on it would increase exponentially?

The anti-pot arguers always seem to argue black and white - because legalizing pot will not eliminate all gangsterism or illegal production and sale, that is somehow supposed to be an argument against legalizing pot. What is forgotten is that legalizing pot would make a huge diff in increasing tax revenue, decreasing enforcement costs (no they would not be 0), prevent people's lives being messed up for use of a substance that is way less harmful to society than booze, etc. Look at what Portugal achieved with just decriminalization. Legalization would take that even further, since they're still not getting tax revenues from it and still have all those illegal producers and sellers.

[andyt]

desertdude wrote:

A little off topic and a bit naive, even stupid I guess but why are so many people into drugs anyway ? Always chasing the next high ? I seriously don't get it.

And whats with you Canadians and pot anyways !

Everytime my friend comes down from Canada, he keeps on insiting I just GOTTA try it !

Do you drink? Same thing. You chase enjoyment in your 4 wheeling - same thing, it's a kind of high. A good ski run in champagne powder is better than any drug trip or some sex. As I wrote in another forum, people have been getting shitfaced since they were people, probably before then. They found marijuana seeds in 30 million year old human sites. The word assassin comes from the word hashish - people in your part of the world would smoke up and then go on a rampage. The Berserkers of the Nordic people used fly agaric to go on their rages. Peyote and mushrooms for the southern people of North America. Somehow somebody thought to try smoking poppypod resin. Beer residue has been found around the pyramids, in fact the workers were paid in it. Etc etc etc etc.

And many people use alcohol, pot or even harder drugs, not always chasing the next high, but from time to time for enjoyment. Me, I gave up all that stuff long ago, but who am I to tell others what to with their own bodies?

[desertdude]

Yeah but your ski run and my off roading don't have the same effects on society nor to they turn me into a drooling idiot.

I can understand people getting into a high before going to battle but there is no comparison today. I'd hardly call drugs enjoyment.

I'm even against alcohol, just look at the amount of people dying in road accidents due to it or violent and some of the dumbest crimes when people were under the influence.

I smoke like a chimmeny but if tommorow it was outlawed I'd give it up in a heartbeat and I'm not exagerating here.