HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/drugs/free.dope

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From: [e-mail] (eye WEEKLY)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.canada,can.general,alt.hemp.politics,alt.drugs,io.eye
Subject: Coverstory: FREE DOPE -- Decriminalize Weed
Date: 18 Aug 1994 21:29:38 -0400
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Message-ID: <3311u2$[e-mail]>


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eye WEEKLY                                              August 18 1994
Toronto's arts newspaper                      .....free every Thursday
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COVER STORY                                                COVER STORY

                              FREE DOPE!
              The case for decriminalization of marijuana

                                  by
                             K.K. CAMPBELL


Problem: The federal government wrestles with a popular "drug" it
has driven underground. Will it increase penalties/cops or lift the
restrictions which drove it underground to begin with?

Solution: Prime Minister Jean Chretien calls for decreased
government intervention instead of draconian police action.

Result: Destruction of the black market.

We aren't talking about pot, we are talking about tobacco. Ottawa
lowered taxes and eliminated the billion-dollar black market
tobacco trade.

Why won't it do the same with marijuana?

Chretien Liberals are treading the draconian path. Bill C-7 (which
has passed second reading) will increase punishment to pot smokers.
The Liberals are content to attract "organized crime" to marijuana
distribution. "Tough" on drugs.

It's estimated that 46 Canadians are penalized daily for pot-related
offences -- 17,000 a year, over 500,000 Canadians in the last 20
years. Canada employs 2,000 narcs, has the world's highest per
capita rate of drug convictions and spends $1 billion annually on
drug enforcement. Over-crowded prisons hold thousands for pot
offences at $200 a day. Half a million young people have been
saddled with criminal records for doing what Prime Ministers Pierre
Trudeau and Kim Campbell admitted to doing.

Ottawa police chief Brian Ford penned his opinion for the Ottawa
Citizen, April 10, saying, "soft drugs," like marijuana, should be
decriminalized. "In my view," the thinking cop wrote, "soft drugs do
not belong in the sphere of criminal enforcement."

He contends the federal government is taking the wrong approach.
"Do they and others in law enforcement really believe that stiffer
penalties will reduce the problem? I do not believe it will. It is my
belief that, before any action to increase penalties is taken, we need
to dialogue and consider alternatives, including decriminalization."

Ford says the judicial system grants discharges for pot possession --
while traffic violations get routine fines. "The courts are sending
a message they are not prepared to give the same status to the use
of soft drugs as the government apparently does." So why are
politicians trying to enforce laws that don't have the respect of the
court system? It's a tremendous waste of resources at a time of
budget cuts. Surely the police have better things to do than hassle
someone smoking a joint.

For such heresy, Ford took a lot of heat. But Canadian Police
Association chief executive officer Jim Kingston defended
Ford in the summer issue of CPA Express: "...we must consider
decriminalizing simple possession and treat it as illegal possession
of alcohol. It makes absolutely no sense to charge thousands for
possession and watch the judiciary grant absolute or conditional
discharges."

Kingston says "zero tolerance is a failure" and the feds should not
be hoping to increase harm to Canadians since "drug use is a
consensual act that is increasing despite the billions of dollars we
have spent trying to prevent that from happening."

Even the head of Interpol told BBC Radio on June 8 that he's "in favor
of decriminalization but not in favor of legalization."

These top cops point to the disastrous U.S. anti-drug campaign --
which has resulted in the highest per capita prison population in the
world (70 per cent of which is supposedly attributable to drug-
related offences) and $45 billion spent since Sept. 1989 with no
decrease in "drug" use.

This call to stop persecuting pot smokers has also been issued by
the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Bar Association, U.S.
Surgeon General, and Canada's famous-yet-neglected Le Dain
Commission Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs of 1973. In
his 1980 Throne Speech, Trudeau announced it was time "to move
cannabis offences to the Food and Drug Act and remove the
possibility of imprisonment for simple possession." In 1993, former
PM Joe Clark said: "Simple possession of marijuana should be
decriminalized ... Direct government sale of marijuana should be
considered." On May 28, 1981, then justice minister Jean Chretien
stood before the House and said: "We do think that once in a while
we have to modernize laws which have been on the books for so long
and do not cope with realities as they exist."

So why are Chretien Liberals aiming to escalate the war against the
millions of Canadians who smoke a little pot?

In the '60s, pot became political, a symbol of counter-culture
revolution, and anti-drug propaganda stepped into high gear. In the
'70s, Liberals talked about decriminalization, but it never happened.
In the '80s, Canada entered the Dark Ages of Brian Mulroney, who
aped whatever U.S. presidents did -- as John Turner noted, once
Ronald Reagan launched his War On (Some) Drugs, Mulroney suddenly
announced Canada, too, had a "drug epidemic."

In the '90s, Chretien takes up Mulroney's mantle. Trudeau Liberals
are gone for good. Chretien Liberals are Conservatives with a
different PR firm and nice red signs.

                          CANADA & HEMP

Around 1804, agricultural planners claimed hemp would be
synonymous with prosperity in Canada. "It began with this fellow
named Napoleon giving the British monarchy a run for its money,"
says Dr. Alexander Sumach, author of Grow Your Own Stone and
Treasury Of Hashish. Napoleon faced the age-old problem: How to
defeat England's superior navy?  "Rather than defeating the fleet
directly, how about defeating it indirectly? It was a matter of time
before British ships needed maintenance on rotted rigging and sails
-- both made of hemp."

So Ontario was turned into a hemp wonderland. When the maritime
uses of hemp disappeared, the crop remained extremely useful. A
Feb. 1938 Popular Mechanics article called "New Billion-Dollar
Crop" discussed the "25,000 products" from hemp, from "dynamite
to cellophane." Marijuana persecution in Canada seems to have begun
in 1923 with Emily Murphy, a police magistrate and Juvenile Court
judge in Edmonton, Alberta. She wrote a series of sensationalistic
disinformation articles for Macleans, which she included in her book
The Black Candle. In the book, she quotes some L.A. police chief:
"Persons using this narcotic smoke the dry leaves of the plant,
which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict
loses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while
under its influence, are immune to pain ... While in this condition,
they become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any
form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of
cruelty ."

This hysteria led to marijuana's inclusion in the Schedule of the
1923 Opium And Narcotic Drug Act. As the Le Dain Commission
noted, this decision was made without parliamentary debate and
without any scientific evidence or "real sense of social urgency."
Cannabis has been legally a narcotic like heroin ever since.

Ironically, while government began its propaganda campaign against
marijuana, it was singing high praises of hemp and encouraging
Ontario farmers to grow it. Hansard entries from 1923 demonstrate
politicians didn't even realize marijuana and hemp were the same
plant. There is no finer example of the ignorance under which most
politicians operate.

"Over the years, they began to realize what they doing, that this
crazy drug came from the flowers of a plant they were paying
farmers to grow," laughs Chris Clay, a director with HEMP Canada
and proprietor of The Great Canadian Hemporium in London, Ont.
"Finally, in 1938, hemp production in Canada was stopped -- though
briefly revived during the war -- because teenagers would get hold
of it and go crazy."

                           KILLER WEED

Hemp has been used by humans since before recorded history. In all
that time, there's never been a single reported overdose death.

Dr. Andrew Weil testified before U.S. Congress that "a smoker would
have to theoretically consume 1,500 pounds of marijuana within
about 15 minutes to induce a lethal response" -- whereas, he noted,
eating 10 raw potatoes could deliver a "toxic response" and aspirin
causes possibly thousands of deaths annually.

Booze kills maybe 18,000 Canadians a year; tobacco another 38,000.
An Addiction Research Foundation (ARF) study found that of all
Ontario deaths related to drug use in 1985, 66 per cent were due to
smoking, 33 per cent to alcohol. Yet these substances have
government sanction.

In 1970, Dr. Robert Harris, chief of behavioral pharmacology at the
Texas Research Institute of Mental Sciences said: "If we were to run
marijuana through the course of procedures that the Food and Drug
Administration requires of a standard drug, we'd probably find it
was one of the safest drugs on the market."

The U.S.-based Public Citizen Health Research Group noted cannabis
could replace more than half of Valium, Librium and Thorazine
prescriptions through its ability to lower blood pressure, reduce
body temperature by .5 degrees, thus relieving stress. (Which
suggests one reason marijuana remains illegal: it's a monumental
threat to the pharmaceutical giants that bestride the Earth.)

In a Globe and Mail article earlier this year, Elizabeth Renzetti
wrote: "On the subject of alcohol, I've seen people slide from Dr.
Jekyll to Mr. Hyde in the space of three tumblers, leaving a trail of
hostility and havoc in their wake. I have never seen anyone high on
pot do anything more offensive than laugh at Married ... With Children
or eat all the potato chips."

Robert Solomon, a University of Western Ontario law professor and
drug policy expert, thinks C-7 is a terrible piece of legislation. It
simply will punish the poor who can't afford to pay the increased
fines.

"Law enforcement creates a market for the most dangerous drugs,"
he says. The War On Some Drugs encourages traffickers to import
hard drugs. If importing cocaine and marijuana carries the same
risk, it is natural the businessperson would rather bring cocaine into
the country because of the higher profit margin and smaller bulk.

ARF has stated its belief criminalization simply increases profit
margins and attract organized crime.

"It's just prohibition all over again," says Mike Borque, a director of
HEMP Canada. "People understand that alcohol prohibition was a
failure and only created Al Capone. Marijuana prohibition creates
drug cartels."

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SIDEBAR                                                        SIDEBAR

                        OLD TIME REVIVAL MEET

                                  by
                             K.K. CAMPBELL


Starting at 11 a.m. at Nathan Phillips Square, the Canadian Hemp
Association (CHA) and The Friendly Stranger (see Rolling eye) are
staging Cannabis Revival Rally 1994 this Saturday (Aug. 20), come
rain or shine. At 1 p.m., the crowd will march up University Ave. to
Queen's Park, where there'll be live music and guest speakers.
Expect to wrap around 6.

For details, contact CHA at 416-977-4159 or email at CHA at
Internex Online -- [e-mail] . Check out the Cannabis Hotline: 416-
977-0461.

Remember: this ain't a smoke-in. No dope.


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SIDEBAR 2                                                    SIDEBAR 2

                             SZABO SPEAKS
              Liberals must save Canadians from themselves

                                  by
                             K.K. CAMPBELL


Ottawa police chief Brian Ford is misguided. Pierre Trudeau is
ancient history. The Canadian Medical Association is naive. HEMP
Canada is "a bunch of drug users."

Meet Paul Szabo -- Liberal MP for Mississauga South. Most pro-
advocacy types dismiss Szabo as an anti-drug dinosaur. They don't
understand why the Liberals picked him to head the house committee
examining Bill C-7, legislation which increases the harm Liberals
can do to Canadians who possess a plant -- and which he would even
toughen by reducing the threshold for marijuana trafficking to one
kilo instead of three.

Szabo has two primary slogans he repeats to the press:

1) "Marijuana is five times more harmful than cigarettes."

A reference to the fact that if you smoke 20 joints a day instead of
20 cigarettes a day, you'll get more tar. It's true. But most people
don't smoke 20 joints a day. Further, HEMP spokesperson Marc Emery
notes: "If the government didn't try to ban water pipes, we could
eliminate most of the danger because the particulates -- the
harmful part of smoking marijuana -- are removed from smoke
through water. THC is oil-soluble, so it passes right through the
water."

2) "Now is not the time to appear soft on drugs."

eye called Szabo and asked if he agreed with activists that there
was a grassroots groundswell of support for decriminalization. He
dismissed this, saying at best "2 per cent of Canadians are regular
drug users." (NOTE: Simon Fraser University criminologist Neil
Boyd's book High Society estimates Canadians spend maybe $10
billion a year on illicit substances.)

We asked if this didn't contradict Szabo's "drug epidemic" theory
which supposedly necessitates the government not appear "soft on
drugs." He paused a very long time before answering: "That's because
we are just holding the line. If we relaxed now, we would open the
flood gates."

He says marijuana must remain in the same category as heroin
because Canadians are "too uneducated" to understand and would
interpret decriminalization of marijuana as an invitation to try
everything. He says marijuana is a "gateway drug" -- meaning it
leads to "harder" drugs. The nation would soon be awash in helpless
addicts.

Police chief Ford specifically called the gateway theory a myth. Mike
Borque, a director of HEMP Canada, asks why, if pot is a gateway
drug, there are millions of Canadians who smoke yet "only 15,000
who use heroin?"

When eye tried to point out many Canadians want marijuana
decriminalized, Szabo snorted and said: "Who does? A bunch of drug
users."

eye responded that many decriminalization advocates don't smoke.

"Oh, yeah, right!"

We insisted this was true.

"I'm sure that's what they tell you."

Szabo apparently believes Canadians can't fight for democratic
rights on this issue without being a "drug user."

"It is astonishing that the Liberals chose this guy to investigate C-
7," Borque says. "A person with such obvious biases, so poorly
informed, a product of Reagan/Bush/Mulroney anti-drug propaganda."


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SIDEBAR 3                                                    3 SIDEBAR

                            NET CONNECTION

                                  by
                             K.K. CAMPBELL

The complexities of this issue are vast, beyond the scope of this
piece. In step with the changing nature of journalism, eye makes
available to readers more information at our Internet site at
Internex Online. Journalism should encourage exploration of an issue.
Our hope is that Canadians, as well as other news organisms, use and
contribute to the site, thereby encouraging educated debate and
deflating propaganda.

You can access the info through ftp at
ftp.io.org:/pub/eye.WEEKLY/misc/hemp or World Wide Web at
http://www.io.org/eye/Misc/Hemp/Hemp.html

This issue isn't simply "good copy." eye sincerely endorses
decriminalization. Canadians should be able to grow and consume any
herb without fear of a police-state/reverend-mother kicking in your
door and dragging you away.

Vive le hemp libre!


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SIDEBAR 4                                                    4 SIDEBAR

                           LET THERE BE WEED

                                  by
                             K.K. CAMPBELL


"And God said, Let the Earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed
after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself,
upon the Earth; and it was so. And the Earth brought forth grass, and
herb yielding seed ... and God saw that it was good." (Genesis 1:10-
11)

In fact, it was great. Hemp clothes, feeds, houses and, after a hard
day doing all that, lets you smoke its flowers.

-- Hemp seed has the highest oil-content in the world (34 per cent),
of a very high quality. When oil is extracted, the remaining "seed-
cake" is second only to soya bean in protein content. Excellent
source of nutrition.

-- It grows anywhere -- as far north as the 60th parallel, i.e., the
Northwest Territories border.

-- It replenishes soil. One Kentucky report claims hemp was grown
on the same land 14 years straight without diminished crop or soil
depletion.

-- It needs virtually no pesticides.

-- It produces four times more paper pulp than trees from one acre
of land over a 20-year period. No dead trees.

-- ADDENDUM: Of course, cranky old Jehovah booted Eve and hubby out
for toking and becoming God-like ("as one of us"). Thus did the Lord
put vicious narcs with flaming swords at the gates of Eden to make
sure his suddenly enlightened children didn't come back and tell him
he was a real asshole. (Genesis 3:24) -- K.K.C.


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