Pubdate: Thu, 9 Feb 2012
Source: Almaguin News (CN ON)
Copyright: Almaguin News 2012
Contact:  http://www.almaguinnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3732
Author: Russell Barth

WON'T SEE LEGAL POT IN HIS LIFETIME

RE: Almaguin News, Feb. 2, Page 4, "Right promise to legalize marijuana"

As someone who has been up to his eyeballs in pot activism for nine 
years, I would classify this Liberal vote to legalize pot as nothing 
more than a bamboozle. The delegates did the right thing, but the 
party will not.

Not one single Liberal candidate has the intelligence or the guts to 
campaign on this issue because not one single Liberal candidate has 
the intelligence or the guts to explain to a voter what, exactly, 
marijuana legalization would even look like!

Ask one and see. They don't want to discuss the issue because they 
quickly find themselves in a conversational quagmire that they can't 
get out of. The media will also not let them campaign on this issue, 
as the media - in general - has a well-established and long-standing 
anti-pot and pro-police bias. The coverage recently of the "pot not 
as bad as tobacco" study is a perfect example of that.

The media continue to let people lie about the supposed dangers of 
pot (already debunked by science and history), and give the right a 
free ride when they talk wild hyperbole. I am 42 years old and I 
don't think I will ever see legalized pot in Canada - and I blame the media.

If legal pot ever does come, it won't come through Parliament, it 
will come the same way same sex marriage, abortion, and medical 
marijuana became legal: through the courts. But then, there have 
already been seven court rulings that have effectively shot down the 
prohibition on pot, but the cops, the media, and other judges, simply 
ignore those rulings, and busts increase by 10,000 every year. So, 
really, I see little-to-no hope here.

Russell Barth, soon-to-be-former federally licensed medical marijuana 
user, Nepean
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom