Friday, July 13, 2007

Potent Pot



Former Vancouver Mayor and Liberal Senator Larry Campbell:
"Marijuana should be legalized and controlled. We should tax the hell out of it with the revenue earmarked for health care"


On my way to watch Brazil and Spain play, I listened to 1040, Vancouver’s sports radio show. It was slow day and instead of talking about sports and the game I was going to the topic de jour was whether marijuana should be legalized. Being Vancouver, naturally the consensus was that it should be. However, one Vancouver Province columnist was nevertheless concerned about “potent” pot.

This irked me. The legend of potent pot rests on some pretty shaky ground and is more Drug Czar myth than reality, but even if we assume that potent pot is a reality it is certainly nothing to be concerned about. http://www.slate.com/id/2074151

Indeed, saying that potent pot is reason for keeping marijuana illegal is akin to saying that alcohol should be banned because gin has higher alcohol content than beer. It makes no sense. Just as people do not drink the same volume of gin as beer, the higher the THC level the less people consume. Ironically more potent pot may be a welcome development. After all, one of the most prominent health effect related to marijuana, if not the most, is that it is usually smoked. The more potent the pot, the less people have to smoke to achieve the same high.
All that being said, Liberal Martha Hall Findlay turned the potent argument on its head. She argued that if potency is the concern, then it should be legalized. The only way to regulate the potency of pot is to legalize it. I would go even further and note that so long as the drug is illegal, producers will seek to increase potency. The higher the potency the smaller the package the smaller the package the less likely they will get caught.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow that senator took the words I've been saying for years, I don't do the pot thing myself to busy paying bills with my money. But to legalize and tax just makes sense. All this coming from a conservative voter.

Koby said...

The thing is he said those words as mayor.

The reason why he could say it is this. 55% of Canadians support Campbell's position. http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/16300
I would be willing to bet money that support is higher, pardon the pun, in Vancouver still.

James Bender said...

Many CONServatives agreee with taxing pot...
At their 2005 party convention fully 55% agreed that pot should be removed from the criminal paradigm and placed into the legal spectrum.
Campbell is right. There is nothing good about prohibition and its' about time someone came out from their government offices and started speaking up about the greatest misuse of public funds Canada has ever or will ever know!