| Essential information for an informed debate about cannabis policy. |
 SUPPORT for Cannabis Law Reform |
OPPOSITION to Cannabis Law Reform: |
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| Conservatives | Conservatives | |
| Liberal | Police Unions | |
| NDP | Other | |
| Other |
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Senator Hugh Segal Tough on poverty, tough on crime "If Canadians want to wage an effective war on crime we must first reshape the debate. If crime abatement is the goal, it is time for all Canadians and their governments to become tough on poverty. By doing so, the outcomes we all want — safer communities and diminishing prison populations — will follow." |
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Tom Flanagan - political science professor at the University of Calgary, author, and conservative political activist. He also served as an advisor to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper until 2004. Guns and grow-ops: Conservatives should be consistent
Over time, conservatives have become enthusiastic champions of drug prohibition, while liberals and other leftists are starting to move on. The critics have done us all a favour by pointing out the enormous damage caused by prohibition:
The prohibition of drugs doesn't work any better than the prohibition of alcohol; drugs are now just as widely available as was alcohol before the repeal of that prohibition; and, like the prohibition of alcohol, prohibition of drugs is doomed to repeal in the long run. |
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Senator Pierre Claude Nolin - Chair of the 2002 Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drug Use "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." read the full article
Read the "Conclusions & Recommendations" of the 2002 SenateCommittee Report. |
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Terence Corcoran - Editor, Financial Post Magazine One Step Closer to a Police State "The common thread running through these money-laundering and other anti-crime laws around the world leads straight to Washington and the most futile crime crusade since prohibition: the war on drugs. Hundreds of billions of dollars, global prosecution regimes and out of control police actions are doing little to stop the drug trade. But they are lining the pockets of bureaucrats and police workers and laying the groundwork for institutionalized state control." |
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Karen Selick - Legal writer and litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation It's not just the waste of money that's objectionable. The war on drugs is creating many other harmful consequences for North American society. Canada is following the U.S. into one legislated nightmare after another, and will soon start to pay the same social price. It is time to identify those costs and weigh them against the questionable benefits of our policy of prohibition. |
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Conservative MP Scott Reid - Lanark - Frontenac - Lennox and Addington Source: Should We End Prohibition? Many currently banned substances have physical and psychological effects that are no more harmful than those associated with legal recreational drugs such as caffeine and alcohol. Like the prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920s, their prohibition skews the allocation of law enforcement resources, artificially raises prices to extremely high levels, encourages crime by addicts, and prevents the emergence of private institutions and products to deal with the very real social problems posed by addiction. |
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Conservative MP Inky Mark - Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette Tories bust legal pot One Westman Tory MP even thinks Harper and Justice Minister Vic Toews should mellow out. Instead of decriminalizing weed as the Liberals proposed, Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette MP Inky Mark said his government should take things and step further and legalize pot. “It’s either you take a hard position and penalize the people who are in the business or else you regulate it and tax it to death,” Mark said. “Personally, I would legalize it like ... alcohol and tobacco. Then you actually would control it. I know that’s not the party’s position, but that’s my preference." “It’s a waste of resources” to get the police to prosecute pot smokers, Mark added. “You’re not getting ahead.” read the full article |
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Michael Walker - Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute and President of the Free Market Research Foundation The war on drugs is lost and prohibition has been a complete failure. These are the conclusions of Sensible Solutions to the Urban Drug Problem a series of policy papers published August 22, 2001 by The Fraser Institute. |
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Patrick Basham - teaches in the Government Department at the Johns Hopkins University. He is Founding Director of the Democracy Institute, a research organization based in Washington, DC. In my view, drug prohibition has all the characteristics of numerous other well-intentioned, yet expensive, counterproductive, Big-Government programs that have outlived any usefulness. The reasons are myriad and include the following: drug prohibition reflects our failure to learn from history; drug prohibition causes crime; drug prohibition corrupts police officers; drug prohibi- tion violates civil liberties and individual rights; drug prohibition throws good money after bad; and drug prohibition weakens—at times, even destroys—families, neighbour- hoods, and communities. |
SES National Poll, Feb. 2005: "Perception of Canadians on Marijuana
Decriminalization and Possession"
View or download the complete poll (PDF)
SES National Poll, Feb. 2005: "Perception of Canadians on Marijuana Decriminalization and Possession"
U.S. Conservatives for Marijuana Legalization
