MICHAEL CUTHBERTSON

Opinions Writer

In Canada today, marijuana use and its perceived danger to society is considered a legal issue. But history reveals that marijuana prohibition isn’t really about the effects of THC.

In 1937, the United States began prohibiting the plant as an excuse to repatriate illegal Mexican immigrants. Since so many used and sold the drug, prohibition legitimized the deportation of these people. Canada, swayed by the American rhetoric of fear (a proud tradition we continue to this day), followed suit and began arresting users.

Considering the seedy origins of this prohibitionist approach, I’d rather turn to a more personal question: what exactly is it about pot that legislators and citizens find so harmful?

For some, it is wrong for the simple fact that it is illegal. A common counter to this is that tobacco and alcohol are legal yet these drugs are more fatal and cause more health problems. Still, some challenge this with fanatical fabrications about teens developing schizophrenia from smoking pot or people developing lung cancer from it. These charges lack scientific weight. Nevertheless, some legitimate research has come out on the harmful effects of weed.

In BBC’s Cannabis: The Evil Weed?, studies performed on “adolescent” mice who received THC revealed memory deficits lasting into adulthood. The study concluded these mice were analogous to teens 15 or younger who smoke cannabis. The moral: drugs are bad for the developing brain.

But we already knew this. We don’t sell cigarettes or alcohol to kids, nor should we sell them weed. But from what I’ve seen, marijuana is not stigmatized out of health concerns. Mostly, people scorn marijuana for being, for lack of a better term, weird.

Pot encourages unusual thinking; not violent, not harmful, but certainly not normal. It is a drug that can create a sense of commonality and humanity, and the powers that be rightfully recognize that a peaceful hippie with non-conformist thinking poses far more of a threat to the maintenance of their power than an obedient, anti-marijuana Canadian citizen.

Similarly, as a party drug, pot seems an odd choice. While it might turn you on to some obscure, bizarre rock music, smoking marijuana won’t exactly have you grinding with that hot chick or dude you totally want to bone. At least not in the way, say, alcohol or other recreational drugs might. Hence, the stigma of marijuana is not so much about bodily harm, rather the moral relativism of our culture versus another.

A few months ago my friend was thrown out of his parent’s house because he’s a pot smoker. As a belated Christmas gift, the same thing just happened to me. My morality was not consistent with my parents’ Christian one, so they did what any good Christian would do: threw their son into the street.

Still, I was dumbfounded when the big confrontation came. I was taken aback by the language they used — it seemed to suggest that most of what they hated about weed was it’s weirdness. My mom told me “Your room smells like weed,” as if the very smell of weed were wrong or evil somehow. She continued, “Weed makes you dysfunctional,” to which I replied that I have a 70 per cent average in university — and wasn’t that functional enough? Reading between the lines, I knew what she really meant: marijuana makes you different, puts you on a different plane of thought from the “functional” non-smokers of society.

But I realize my plight is petty, compared to the many serving time for smoking or selling weed. As many as 20 million Americans have been arrested, convicted and incarcerated for use of marijuana. It is not a stretch to presume that many of these “felons” weren’t harming anyone when they got busted ”“ because as a general rule, stoned people don’t even have the energy to commit violent crimes. And so it seems people are being arrested not as a precautionary measure to protect society from collapse, but for possessing and using a substance deemed unnatural, for spending the afternoon listening to Pink Floyd instead of shopping at Wal-Mart (like real Americans do).

Although marijuana is currently illegal in Canada, in practice it is largely tolerated in small quantities. Thankfully, this typically translates into fines instead of prison terms for those arrested on charges of possessing or trafficking the substance. However, prohibitionists — that is, the Conservative Party of Canada, along with the support of the Liberals — are pushing for more draconian measures. Bill S-10, if passed, would introduce mandatory minimum prison sentences for the sale of cannabis.

In stark opposition, the Green Party of Canada, alongside provincial marijuana parties, continue to push for full legalization of cannabis use.

Despite these parties’ meager political power, their cause is well supported. A 2009 Angus Reid poll found that 53 per cent of Canadians agree with the statement “The use of marijuana should be legalized.”

For the 47 per cent in opposition, ask yourself: what is it about legalization that would negatively impact our country? Perhaps you believe that more people will become potheads — and you’re probably right. Most people feel comfortable using a substances if their culture deems it right. In 1930s America — during alcohol’s prohibition era — marijuana remained perfectly legal. It was sold like cigarettes in jazz clubs, markets and pharmacies, and not surprisingly, the drug became quite popular in that time.

While the decision to smoke or withhold from smoking marijuana should be a personal choice, prohibiting the substance takes away such liberty. The current system is not only haphazard, but sends a dangerous, dichotomizing message to the public: that all currently illegal drugs are bad, and all presently legal drugs are alright.

Ask yourself — who knows your body better: you or Canadian legislators?

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image: Flickr