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  Hearings To Seek Public's Attitude About Marijuana
Posted by CN Staff on May 10, 2002 at 08:19:44 PT
By Mike O'Brien, Regina Leader Post  
Source: Regina Leader Post  

cannabis If one looks solely at the scientific research, it's hard to support a punitive approach to cannabis use, according to the head of a Senate committee that will visit Regina Monday.

"It's much easier to pass a penal law that says 'It's illegal now,' " Senator Pierre Claude Nolin told the Leader-Post Thursday. "Black and white, if we look solely at the scientific evidence, that moves me toward liberalization."

However, many Canadians don't want legalization or even decriminalization, even if scientific research paints a picture of a drug that is neither dangerous nor very addictive, said Nolin, chairperson of the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs.

"I've already received tons of e-mails that say 'Look, no matter what you tell me, it's immoral.' ... At the end of the day, if the population wants something else (other than liberalization), they will get something, else."

That's why the committee's work includes a six-stop series of public hearings, with the curious itinerary of Regina, Richmond, B.C., Montreal, Mount Pearl, Nfld., Moncton, N.B. and Winsdsor, Ont.

"I didn't want to go to the obvious, large urban areas."

The committee is reviewing Canada's anti-drug legislation, particularly cannabis, and will present its final report in August. Final recommendations could include a call to soften legislation.

Nolin admits there are cultural differences within Canada that will reflect support for liberalized cannabis laws and policies in some regions, but not in others. Rural areas tend to be more conservative on the topic, he said.

The hearing begins Monday at 8 a.m. with interviews with experts at Regina's City Hall. The committee will embark on a fact-finding visit to the Piapot reserve that afternoon.

"If Canada is going to change its policy, we have to realize how it will affect (aboriginal) communities," he said. The committee returns to City Hall at 7 p.m. to listen to the public.

The hearings may be stirred somewhat by the interim discussion paper the committee released last week. It contains several controversial opinions, including the assertion that cannabis use doesn't lead to harder drugs. "It's a very strongly entrenched myth in the public perception, and that's why we stated it right at the beginning of (our discussion paper,)" Nolin said.

The paper also states cannabis use is "relatively benign" in terms of its effect on health.

However, the committee is not determined to choose only between status quo, decriminalization or legalization, Nolin said. "We're looking at all the options and that includes increased prohibition."

Source: Regina Leader-Post (CN SN)
Author: Mike O'Brien, Regina Leader Post
Published: May 10, 2002
Copyright: 2002 The Leader-Post Ltd.
Contact: letters@leaderpost.com
Website: http://www.canada.com/regina/leaderpost/

Related Articles & Web Site:

Canadian Links
http://freedomtoexhale.com/can.htm

MPs Present Petition To Reintroduce Pot Bill
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12785.shtml

Canada: The Debate Over Decriminalization
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12697.shtml

Should We Treat Pot Like Tobacco? Senators Ask
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12696.shtml


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Comment #11 posted by goneposthole on May 11, 2002 at 06:30:04 PT
Regina
"The police in Regina don't give 2 shits about drugs, they have such a problem with car theft."-a quote from another cannabis message board

Regina is the western headquarters for the RCMP Academies.

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Comment #10 posted by E_Johnson on May 11, 2002 at 00:37:28 PT
Lehder it's a good idea
I'd be happy to attend a few more of these official persecutions as one among a group that silently fills the defendant's side of the public seats with narrowed eyes and see if the self-righteousness of the judge, prosecutors and crooked narcs might be dampened a little.

Attending trials, or often just hanging around otuside of trials, was one of the ways Soviet dissidents operated. It was an important part of their operations because often nobody really knew anything about what was happening, and people walking by sometimes would learn a lot more about their country than ever saw the light in Pravda or Izvestya.

It's really too bad that American students have been so cheated out of Soviet history. Soviet Communism was a system that demanded extraordinary courage and endurance from people committed to freedom and human rights. But honoring courage and endurance isn't part of the postmodern curriculum. It's not cynical enough.

The penalty for anti-Soviet agitation was only 5 to 7 years and there was no three strikes law in the Soviet Union.

In some sense, we've actually become worse than they were. Americans are such a vengeful people.

But attending trials is a good idea. It's a time-honored idea. It's exactly right.

Oh shoot you know, 13 years ago when I became so interested in the Soviet system because I had friends who were leaving it behind, I never dreamed that all of that knowlegde would end up being so apllicable in America.

I really thought, oh I am studying this lost tribe of dissidents, the world no longer needs this dissident culture, we're all headed towards freedom, state authoritarianism has been solidly rejected and thrown into the trashbin of history... It's all been reduced to the quaintness of a finished story.

I never imagined that I'd end up here seeing everything I learned about how dissidents survived the Soviet system become immediately applicable in my own country.

It's not quaint or finished at all.



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Comment #9 posted by BGreen on May 10, 2002 at 19:53:59 PT
Standard philosophical argument
Is cannabis immoral because it's illegal, or is cannabis illegal because it's immoral.

I question the logic of anyone who justifies incarceration for someone based on morality. If you object to something on moral grounds, don't do that thing. Locking someone up so they can (as I hear so often in this part of the country) 'be raped by Bubba to teach them a lesson' is the epitome of immorality.

The problem is that there are too many people that really think "I don't care what you tell me," or "I don't care what the studies show," or "I don't care what the truth is."

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Comment #8 posted by Letsgetfree on May 10, 2002 at 15:28:28 PT
Capt'n Jean
"I didn't want to go to the obvious, large urban areas."

Rural areas tend to be more conservative on the topic, he said.

LOL! boy talk about not wanting to listen! Are you trying to hear what Canadians are saying? I'm not sure of the %, but i'm quite sure that THE MAJORITY OF CANADIANS LIVE IN LARGE URBAN AREAS! Toronto has more people then all of the Canadian territories combined.

So if the rural areas are more conservitive, and they are going to mostly rural areas, what do you think the anwser is they're looking for? With Capt'n Jean at the helm there is no allowence for any rocking on the boat. Standing behind ideas because THEY ARE THE RIGHT THING TO DO takes leadership. Unfortunatly there is none of that present in Ottawa these days.

Power Corrupts, don't ever forget that.

Letsgetfree

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #7 posted by Lehder on May 10, 2002 at 14:26:02 PT
on various mistreatments of the dead
"I've already received tons of e-mails that say 'Look, no matter what you tell me, it's immoral.' ..

If we're to have laws enforcing "morality" then we should bear in mind that adultery, gambling, abortion, circumcision and profanity are regarded as immoral by some. I myself may soon come to regard democracy as immoral. John Ashcroft, who believes that the US was founded on religious principles and regards Jesus as "our only king," considers dancing to be immoral. Remarkably, as recorded by Herodotus, there's even the precedent of a people who regarded eating the dead as immoral:

XXVIII. I hold it then in every way proved that Cambyses was quite insane; or he would never have set himself to deride religion and custom. For if it were proposed to all nations to choose which seemed best of all customs, each, after examination, would place its own first; so well is each convinced that its own are by far the best. [2] It is not therefore to be supposed that anyone, except a madman, would turn such things to ridicule. I will give this one proof among many from which it may be inferred that all men hold this belief about their customs. [3] When Darius was king, he summoned the Greeks who were with him and asked them for what price they would eat their fathers' dead bodies. They answered that there was no price for which they would do it. [4] Then Darius summoned those Indians who are called Callatiae,1 who eat their parents, and asked them (the Greeks being present and understanding through interpreters what was said) what would make them willing to burn their fathers at death. The Indians cried aloud, that he should not speak of so horrid an act. So firmly rooted are these beliefs; and it is, I think, rightly said in Pindar's poem that custom is lord of all.2

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126&layout=&loc=3.38

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spectral contempt of court

I've spent a few afternoons over the years attending the trials of unfortunates being prosecuted for minor drug violations. One fellow had sold $500 of something or other to a narc. The narc testified that the prearranged deal had been for only $250, but that he'd doubled the order upon arrival. He offered as evidence of the defendant's limitless criminality the fact that the doubled order was filled immediately by only a quick trip back up from the street, into the house and back down again. I took a good look at the narcs while I was there, noted their names, and watched too as the blonde lady judge sentenced a half-starved, pitifully ignorant and illiterate non-English speaking dark skinned victim who had a really weak lawyer to eighteen years in the state pen.

I was in utter contempt of every aspect of the proceeding, and though I dared not make a sound, I'm certain my sentiments were palpable to one and all. In other trials I've had to forcefully cover my mouth to keep from bursting out in mirth at so much mendacity and foolishness.

These are truly kangaroo courts. No one attends them, just the officials, not even reporters are present. I sat there alone, the only person not a part of the rituals.

I'd be happy to attend a few more of these official persecutions as one among a group that silently fills the defendant's side of the public seats with narrowed eyes and see if the self-righteousness of the judge, prosecutors and crooked narcs might be dampened a little. No one watches these horrors, and the state can do as it pleases in the Lubyankan basements of America.

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Comment #6 posted by E_Johnson on May 10, 2002 at 12:27:27 PT
The legal end to witch hunting
The legal end to witch hunting occurred when legal thinkers of the age decided that spectral evidence should not be admissable in court. This happened NOT because the legal establishment became overcome with remorse over all of the torture and murder of innocent people going on under their jurisdiction, but because witch trial witnesses could get very enthusiastic while on the stand and start claiming that the judges and prosecutors were witches and were sending them demons in the court room to keep them from telling the people the truth.

If spectral evidence could be used against the least powerful women, it could be used just as easily against the most powerful men. Now if only they'd figured that out a couple of hundred years of socially and legally sanctioned torture and murder earlier...

It was one thing to torture to death oprdinary women over spectral evidence but when judges and even political leaders had spectral evidence brought into court against them, the system of witch hunting began to collapse.

And also, religion changed.

The vision of God being touted by European Christian theologists changed from a weakened angry vengeful God being actively threatened every day by Satan in the form of witches, to a happy strong God who was too powerful and loving and omnipotent to be threatened by anything.

I don't know what the analogue of this would be today to end the era of pothead hunting.

Oh but yes I do -- a Supreme Court that actually defended the Constitution.

And religious leaders who truly believed in compassion.

It's those basic values that always end up mattering so much.



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Comment #5 posted by E_Johnson on May 10, 2002 at 12:06:38 PT
It was the same for witchcraft in the 16th century
If one looks solely at the scientific research, it's hard to support a punitive approach to cannabis use, according to the head of a Senate committee that will visit Regina Monday.

The point never has at any time been the scientific evidence. This is a social hate campaign and it is well beyond the power of science to resolve.

People do not realize that the worst period of witch hunting in Europe took place during the Age of Reason at the very same time that the great thinkers of modern science were establishing modern science.

During witch trials, what was called spectral evidence was valid evidence that could be introduced during the proceedings.

For example, a witness would be called against a suspected witch, and while on the stand, he or she would claim that the defendant was sending demons to pinch them and keep them from testifying at that moment even though no such demons were visible or detectable to anyone in the court at the time.

The demons were invisible and undetectable yet admitted into evidence in a secular court of law.

A court of law under the guidance of the most learned and accomplished men of the age. At the very height of the Age of Reason.

Secular courts of law under the guidance of the most learned and accomplished men of the Age of Reason in Western Europe accepted as evidence a witness's statement that invisible demons sent by the defendant were attacking her in court to keep her from testifying against the defendant.

When you ponder the implications of that for Western culture in general, marijuana prohibition seems almost understandable.



[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #4 posted by Dan B on May 10, 2002 at 11:52:06 PT:

Their Argument is an Obfuscation of Truth
"I've already received tons of e-mails that say 'Look, no matter what you tell me, it's immoral.' ... At the end of the day, if the population wants something else (other than liberalization), they will get something, else."

If politicians took that approach during the civil rights era, we would have no civil rights legislation. How many people at that time believed that forcing white kids to go to school with black kids was "immoral"? Yet we now have laws that do exactly that.

How many thought that interracial marriage was "immoral"? Hell, many still think that, yet we continue to allow--even celebrate--interracial marriage today--and rightly so, of course. Yes, we now have laws that say it's perfectly fine for anyone to marry anyone else. That wasn't always so, and such laws were put into effect against the will of many registered voters.

How many thought that it was morally wrong to give African Americans the same rights as European Americans? Here again, there are far too many people out there who continue to treat African Americans like second-class citizens by way of racial profiling, unequal employment practices, etc. There are still realtors in Lubbock, Texas who, as a matter of practice, show their clients of African descent only houses on the east side of town--the so-called "black part of town." But there are still laws against such practices.

By the same token, how many felt morally justified in turning firehoses and attack dogs on peaceful civil rights demonstrators?

These questions have great relevance to the way we treat cannabis and those who use it. It is wrong to arrest people who peacefully use cannabis. It is wrong to teargas, club, shoot rubber bullets and shotgun beanbags at, and arrest peaceful demonstrators at pro-legalization rallys. It is wrong to believe that the arrest of over 700,000 cannabis users every year is somehow morally justifiable. In short, it is wrong to continue practicing evil just because some small-minded people still think it is right to do so.

I don't think anyone believes that bigotry against cannabis users will end as soon as law enforcement backs off. But that isn't the point. The point is that people should not be harassed in any way for choosing to use a relatively harmless substance in the same way others can legally use more harmful substances.

Leaders are supposed to lead, and when said leaders, duly elected by their constituents to create the best legislation possible, refuse to acknowledge and change their evil ways on the grounds that some constituents won't like (read: vote for) them if they do, the entire system becomes a matter of sheep following sheep.

To use the argument that some people believe cannabis use is immoral to justify prohibition is to abandon the responsibility of proper government.

Dan B

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #3 posted by p4me on May 10, 2002 at 10:38:00 PT
The clear cause is U.S....
corruptoristicism and obsufuckinvacation. It is as clear as that.

VAAI

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #2 posted by PonziScheme on May 10, 2002 at 09:11:49 PT
Half of Canadians support pot legalization
Newshawk: Chuck Beyer Pubdate: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 Source: Canadian Press (Canada Wire) Copyright: 2001 The Canadian Press (CP) Author: MICHELLE MACAFEE-- The Canadian Press

CANADIANS DIVIDED ON LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA

MONTREAL ( CP ) -- Canadians appeared evenly split about whether the federal government should move to legalize marijuana for personal use, suggests a new poll.

The Leger Marketing survey indicated 46.8 per cent of Canadians questioned earlier this month were in favour of a law that would allow marijuana to be sold and used legally.

Forty-seven per cent of respondents were opposed to such a measure, while 6.2 per cent either didn't know or refused to answer the question.

"What this poll suggests is that the government doesn't necessarily have a blank cheque," Jean-Marc Leger, president of Leger Marketing, said in an interview.

"It might be acceptable to the population but it will also take a certain dose of courage by politicians if they want to legalize it because it's not accepted by everyone in the same way."

Regional breakdowns in favour of legalized marijuana were as follows: Quebec, 52.7 per cent; British Columbia, 52.4; Ontario, 45.9; the Maritimes, 44.7; the Prairies, 37.4; and Alberta, 36.9.

Leger Marketing surveyed 1,507 people across the country between June 5 and 13.  The national results are considered accurate within plus or minus 2.6 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

The margins of error for the regional breakdowns are higher.

The questions did not distinguish between the use of pot for medicinal purposes and its recreational use.  Leger noted previous polls have indicated strong support for the use of medicinal marijuana.

In April, Health Minister Allan Rock announced long-awaited new regulations that will allow certain people with terminal or serious illnesses to use marijuana to ease their suffering.

The move has met with little opposition and is expected to take effect by the end of July.

But groups such as the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police are among those to have called on Ottawa to take the bolder step of decriminalizing the possession of marijuana for any kind of personal use.

Tory Leader Joe Clark recently called for the decriminalization of the simple possession of small amounts of dope.

Meanwhile, the House of Commons passed a unanimous motion before the summer recess to create a committee to examine the issues of non-medical drugs in Canada.

A spokesperson for Rock said the minister is "looking forward enthusiastically to the discussion and debate" of the committee.

But Catherine Lappe noted decriminalization of marijuana is not the intended priority of a federal national drug strategy the Liberals promised in the election campaign last fall.

Leger said the debate over marijuana closely resembles those that have taken place at the provincial level over video lottery terminals, casinos or the sale of alcohol.

"People are often very divided on these kinds of questions," said Leger.

"So it's not the population that will push the government, but results like this leave the government with a certain latitude."

The Leger poll also indicated that more than a third, 38.7 per cent, of those surveyed admitted to having used marijuana at least once.  Forty-nine per cent of respondents in British Columbia said they had used it, while the figure in Ontario was 35.8 per cent.

When asked whether a law authorizing the sale and use of marijuana would reduce the use of the drug among minors, 57.4 per cent of those asked said "not at all", while only seven per cent said "a lot."

While 17.1 per cent said the reduction would be "a little", 13.9 per cent said it would be "enough" and 4.6 per cent said they did not know or refused to answer. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #1 posted by masscrusader on May 10, 2002 at 08:28:23 PT
The you know what?
tell those people who think it is immoral that they have been lied to.

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