ARE THE CANNABIS LAWS FINALLY STARTING TO LIGHTEN UP?

2009.04.02

Could it finally be true that the United States as well as Canada could start to see what the rest of the population of North America has already seen for a while? Most people don't have a problem with someone smoking a joint for recreational use.Weed, pot, hash, or any of the other names it is known by is far more recognized in the average home nowadays.

Canada has been stuck between pleasing their American counterparts about Marijuana use because of their strict guidelines on drugs as a whole and to how and where it’s crossed their borders. The criminal aspect has been a big part of the picture. This was based on the fact that how much money can be made not only bringing it in from other countries but from exporting, Hydroponics weed from Canada has been known to be exchanged for the much harder drugs such as Cocaine and Heroin at dollar for dollar.

America launched a war on drugs called Perfidy more than four decades ago. With no real solution to the problem that still plagued them and they had to seek new measures to combat this ongoing battle.

It’s funny now that the some states like Massachusetts who had a hard line approach to weed have said they would look toward a more liberal stance towards Cannabis use rather than waste their resources on something the country does not regard as a threat.

With that being said a new State law  states if your caught with less than 1 ounce of THC, be it weed, hash or oil (a derivative of Cannabis or Hashish ) it would be classed  as civil offense meaning rather than a criminal record or jail time you might get a $100 fine and have your smoke seized.

Anybody can say a drug is bad for you but where is the line drawn. Alcohol is a drug but legal, and many an argument has been made to whether Marijuana with it’s relatively begin aspects compared to booze can so easily be kept illegal. The money spent in enforcing these futile laws for an herb that seems to have no serious consequences to our society except for a depletion of our court times as well as our police services seems outlandish.

The bottom line is this, through public surveys throughout Canada as well as the USA people agree that with the problems we are, facing economically the money we are using to combat the use of weed we could spend that cash elsewhere and solving may other problems.

A Vancouver lawyer with the assistance of a local activist have made some recommendations to the BC Civil Liberties Association to start the decriminalization of Cannabis in BC and it seems the council has also approved their idea again stating the money enforcing a law most don't agree with could be spent on something far more beneficial.

Point in fact is though it cant be entirely broke down into monetary figures, that it cost Vancouver to enforce their cannabis related laws as much as 4.5 million which is over double what was spent on public services such as housing in 2007.