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I think you will care when a great whack of trucks are held up at the border getting searched and inspected. The backlog will hurt the businesses dependent on the "Just-In-Time" delivery model.
It won't happen. You know as well as I do that business in the US would shut down that kind of slowdown about a day after it was implemented. They aren't buying our products because they want to be nice to us, they are buying them because they need them.
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You've also stated you would wish to see quotas. What happens if somebody exceeds that quota or sells outside regular channels? Would you fine them? Arrest them? What consequences can you impose that are in any way different from the laws on the CDSA right now? Who is going to enforce the quotas or seize excess crop?
Like I said, give it to the Wheat Board. Check into that...you'll find that there are penalties, including jail, for people who try to dodge the system.
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And coming to our collective senses isn't a persuasive argument at all. How is legalizing marijuana any different from legalizing murder? Murder happens despite being on the books so why not legalize it and tax it too? You're never going to 100% eradicate it, millions of dollars are spent prosecuting people (who too can claim they 'made a mistake') who are forever stigmatized. Those lines of thought are faulty when it comes to legalizing marijuana.
Because the illegality of marijuana was a flawed idea to begin with. Look into that too...Janey Canuck made some shit up so we bowed to American pressure. The law never should have existed.
More than that, have a look at when prohibitions work and when they collapse. Prohibitions work when it is "us" imposing it on "them". There is no "them" anymore because the majority of Canadians use drugs themselves or know somebody who does. The prohibition is unsustainable at that point.
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Also, there is nothing 'benign' about marijuana. It isn't a glass of milk. It has all the same harmful effects of tobacco, causes memory deficiencies and eventually can induce schizophreniamimetic responses in chronic users. If you think THC is akin to riboflavin, think again. I'll anticipate your next argument and cut it off at the pass. Marijuana, as it was in the 60's, wasn't too addictive and could be used recreationally and occassionally, right? Today's marijuana is not yesterday's marijuana. The THC content of domestically produced marijuana today is roughly 3 or 4 times stronger than it was. The trend is to increase potency to the point it becomes addictive, and even 60's levels were addictive. Don't believe me? Dr. George Koob, director of the Psychopharmacology Department at Scripps Research Institute and Professor at the University of California San Diego has published study after study confirming this.
We can play duelling studies if you want. There are more peer reviewed articles backing me up than there are backing you up though. I'm sure you are fully aware of that however, which is why you brought up the Koob studies.
You kind of miss my point though...it isn't just marijuana that we need to change the criminal status of, it's all drugs. We didn't have a major addiction crisis before we made drugs illegal. Those that were addicts often led full and productive lives. We are treating medical and social problems as criminal ones and it isn't working. After a hundred years of failure it's about time we tried something else.
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Is the government hypocritical by stating they intend to decriminalize simple possession but increase penalties for growing? Yup. I agree. Having been one of those folks who voted Liberal, I'm more than pissed at Martin's current dithering.
So you would keep on criminalizing people for smoking pot?
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Legalization is surrender. The good fight is prohibition but better strategies are needed to curb the demand, not just attempts to destroy the supply.
Legalization is sanity. Prohibition doesn't work, has never worked, and will continue not to work. If we took the money and human resources wasted trying to enforce prohibition and put them towards education, rehabilitation and harm reduction we would have an effect.
CKA Moderator 
