A Note of Sanity

Anyone paying attention to Canadian news in the last week has by now heard of the disaster that befell the RCMP at Rochfort Bridge. The CBC has put together a good summary of the events, at least so far as is possible with the information released to date.

There seem to be three major responses to the events of last thursday: First, the entire country seems to be absolutely shocked that such a thing could happen and much saddened to find that it has; Second, both the mainstream media and a large number of politicians seem to have taken the opportunity to point out just how evil marijuana is; Third, the RCMP are vigorously defending both their officers and procedures. I'm afraid I have to take issue with the latter two responses.

I have heard arguments that the RCMP followed proper procedure throughout the event; that the officers were properly equipped and backed-up; that no-one could have predicted the outcome. None of these arguments seem to hold any water. Given what they knew about the owner - his drug habits & connections, violent nature, and past incidents with the law - and the fact that almost any rural farm in Alberta is likely to include at least a hunting rifle somewhere, how can they justify leaving two lightly armed rookie officers without backup overnight on private property? I mean, sure, for the purposes of recovering stolen property (the leased vehicle), two lightly armed officers is sufficient, but as soon as they found the grow op they should logically have done one of two things: either get the hell out of there and come back properly supported, or call in the cavalry right away.

Which brings me to the second issue. I can't see how this incident does anything but underscore how ridiculous it make as benign a substance as marijuana illegal. It's nothing but a cash cow for organized crime and a drain on our policing resources. And yet somehow almost every politician who has commented on the issue in the past couple of days is somehow claiming this is further proof that marijuana is a bad influence on our society and should be further repressed. So I was thankful to read the following opinion piece on the CBC. At least someone out there is still sane.

from www.cbc.ca:

MARTIN O'MALLEY

There was something inevitable about the tragedy that happened in Alberta, the shootout that killed four young members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at a marijuana grow operation.

Police and others have been warning us for years that grow-ops in Canada are getting bigger and more dangerous, with the money connected to them rising well into the billions. It is a scourge across Canada, in the biggest cities, the smallest towns, on isolated farms and in basement apartments and suburban bungalows.

It's so big that it's time we used the army to back up police forces across Canada to clean them up, if not the small ma-and-pa operations than at least the billion-dollar operations such as the one in Alberta that had such tragic consequences.

The fact that the deaths of the four Mounties was the biggest loss of life for the esteemed force since the Northwest Rebellion in 1885 should prompt us to look back at other events in history that dealt with – or tried to deal with – the suppression of illegal drugs.

Take Prohibition, the "noble experiment" enforced in the United States between 1920 and 1933, that was supposed to reduce crime and social problems related to the illegal production of alcohol.

Mark Thornton, a professor of economics at Auburn University in Alabama, says that Prohibition, though well intentioned, was a miserable failure.

"The lessons of Prohibition remain important today," Thornton wrote in a policy paper in 1991. "They apply not only to the debate over the war on drugs but also to the mounting efforts to drastically reduce access to alcohol and tobacco and to such issues as censorship and bans on insider trading, abortion, and gambling."

The police have been warning us for years of the dangers of these grow-ups. Former RCMP officer Rene Hamel, who investigated grow-ops in British Columbia – estimated to be worth some $7 billion – said marijuana growers will do anything to protect their operations – including murder.

Grow-ops use bear traps, gas traps and sophisticated weaponry to protect their investments, which are substantial, and growing. The more marijuana is illegal, the more profits there will be, and the more dangerous these grow-ops become.

The grow-ops clearly are out of control and the police do not have the resources to handle it. When Alberta's Anne McLellan was justice minister in 2001 she said she is "quite open" to a debate on both decriminalization and legalization of marijuana. Allan Rock, the health minister at the time, also called for a "frank discussion" on changing the laws prohibiting marijuana.

This is not an argument against marijuana, despite the fact many police forces try to convince us that marijuana is as dangerous as heroin, cocaine, crack or many other genuinely dangerous drugs. Most of the problems associated with marijuana are because it is it an illegal drug.

When young people hear police saying marijuana is in the same league as much harder drugs, they know they are being conned. Worse, when they hear authorities equating marijuana with heroin and cocaine they might be tempted to try them because they know how wrong most authorities are about the dangers of pot.

The latest official statement on the pros and cons of marijuana in Canada came in 2002 from the Senate committee on illegal drugs, which presented a paper that said marijuana is not a "gateway" drug that inevitably leads to harder drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

Those who argue that heroin and cocaine addicts all started by indulging in marijuana are correct only in the sense that heroin and cocaine addicts probably started with beer – or milk.

"Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol and should be treated not as a criminal issue but as a social and public health issue," said Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, who headed the committee.

Many thought Prohibition was working when it first became law in the early 1920s.

Alcohol consumption did indeed drop in the first few years. When organized crime realized the profits that would be made by illegally supplying alcohol to customers, alcohol consumption increased, as did crime and corruption in high places.

"Prohibition removed a significant source of tax revenue and greatly increased government spending," wrote Thornton, the economics professor at Auburn University. "It led many drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to encounter in the absence of Prohibition."