I was thinking about yesterday's story, about Canada looking to the United States for advice on our drug policy. It's bad enough that we are looking to a nation whose drug policy has been a costly disaster. The United States incarcerates a disproportionate number of people of color. The war on drugs costs billions of dollars per year without having a significant impact on the number of drug users. In order to ignore these facts, our elected representatives have to be either willfully blind and stupid or desperately trying to win brownie points from the US government.
But let's pretend for one minute that the war on drugs could succeed and would succeed, if only we poured enough money into law enforcement, built enough jails, locked up enough brown people and gave up enough of our civil liberties. What would we have accomplished?
In the case of marijuana, we would have taken one of our most beneficial plants and wiped it off the face of the earth. Marijuana is an extremely safe recreational substance. Nobody has ever suffered a fatal overdose while using it, it is not linked to cancer and is highly unlikely to be implicated in motor vehicle accidents (despite the Tory governments' pointless drugged driving legislation). Not only that, it is a medicine which is cheap and highly effective. Big Pharma isn't very happy to know that there is an easy-to-grow weed which is highly effective in treating a wide range of ailments, including nausea, AIDS, glaucoma, cancer, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and chronic pain.
More criticism:
U.S. shows us what not to do
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