Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/4/2012 (3095 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Editorial

It was not even a major news story, but that is what perhaps makes it remarkable. Last week, in three separate raids, Winnipeg police seized more than $1 million worth of marijuana and pot paraphernalia, including marijuana plants, grow-op equipment and cash from the sale of drugs.

That is good work by the police in enforcing the drug laws as they currently exist. It does not, however, say much for the drug laws themselves. If in the space of one week in one moderate-sized city more than $1 million in drug-related products and profits can be confiscated, then clearly the scale of drug-related activity is huge.

The question is: Should this activity be criminal? In the case of the use of marijuana, which is widely acknowledged to be no more and perhaps even less harmful than the use of alcohol or tobacco -- which are profitably regulated and sold by governments across the country -- there is no justification for criminalizing it other than the traditional middle-class convention against the use of the "killer weed," as it was once so inappropriately called.

Events in Winnipeg last week give us an idea of the extent to which marijuana use has permeated Canadian culture. It gives us an idea of what kind of money flows into criminal hands because of the laws against it. And it should give us the common sense to decriminalize marijuana so it can be controlled and regulated.