Credit Where Credit is Due

This National Post column by Colby Cosh on Marc Emery (the "Prince of Pot") largely gets it right:

"The U.S. is using the technical presence of an unenforced law on our books to carry its drug war onto our soil. If the Honourable Mr. Nicholson allows this to reach its logical conclusion, and Mr. Emery is sent south for notional crimes committed entirely on Canadian soil, it will constitute a blow to our national sovereignty."

Of course I'm very doubtful as to whether the Conservatives will stand up to protect Mr. Emery as it would clash with their new "war on drugs" mentality. Harper is very conscious about staying on message, so I doubt that he would let common sense or jurisprudence override his political instincts.

More Reefer Madness!

Cannabis will make you a psycho killer according to a new study! Or, um, not so much if you bother to look beyond the headline or the first paragraph. Among the tidbits that you find:

"The researchers said they couldn't prove that marijuana use itself increases the risk of psychosis, a category of several disorders with schizophrenia being the most commonly known."

So in other words they can establish correlation but not causation. In other words this is in the same category as Richard Dawkins' dry sarcasm about Hitler and Stalin and the mustache correlation explaining their behaviour. Say it with me kids, correlation does not prove causation. Is it too bold to speculate as to whether some of the psychotics taking pot were in fact self-medicating? People with ADHD are more likely to self-medicate with, among other things, cocaine, a drug very much akin to Ritalin, so it's not like this would be an implausible theory.

The report goes on to say that there may or may not be some biological reason for marijuana to do this or that to one's system. But no one knows for sure.

Wait a sec? Who wrote this whole thing anyway?

"Two of the authors of the study were invited experts on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs Cannabis Review in 2005. Several authors reported being paid to attend drug company-sponsored meetings related to marijuana, and one received consulting fees from companies that make antipsychotic medications."

So they weren't exactly disinterested parties, eh? The Star's headline for this article (and it seems to representative) was Pot can make you psychotic: Study but it might have more accurately stated According to some people with vested interests in this sort of thing there appears to be a correlation between marijuana and psychosis that still needs further study to be understood. But then that wouldn't sell newspapers would it?

Wasting police time and fueling street gangs...

That's what we are doing by keeping pot illegal. It seems today though that Canada's n00b government is also racking up court costs. Another judge has thrown out a marijuana possession charge on the grounds that it's unconstitutional. The legal argument is an interesting one too, from the CBC:

"In court, the man argued that the federal government only made it policy to provide marijuana to those who need it, but never made it an actual law. Because of that, he argued, all possession laws, whether medicinal or not, should be quashed."

I can't believe we waste money on this. Where is all the supposed Conservative austerity?

Pot Busts Rising: Wise Use of Resources?

Since the Conservatives killed decriminalization legislation, pot busts are on the way up again. First of all I should say that whatever pot is supposed to do, it doesn't do it for me, not my thing. I should also say that there are lots of regular users that I know who are perfectly successful, hard working, tax paying citizens. Yes some people have a problem with it I'm sure, just as some people have a problem with booze or a problem with gambling. In both those cases though, the practice is allowed, but not with marijuana.

None of these arguments are new, we know this. I cringe when I think though that my tax dollars are being used to round up people using something that is surely no more harmful than alcohol.