'Legalize It': Liberal Party Votes to Legalize Marijuana
January 16, 2012 - 6:18am
Rae Accepts Liberal Party's Vote on Legalizing Marijuana, But Says There's Practical Questions That Must Be Addressed (and vid)
http://blogs.canada.com/2012/01/15/rae-accepts-liberal-partys-vote-on-le...
"Interim leader Bob Rae says his party's decision Sunday to overwhelmingly support legalizing marijuana use in Canada reflected the spirit of his party's biennial convention in Ottawa...
77 percent of delegates ended up voting in favour of legalizing the drug."
Bravo and high time too!
You can tell what he really thinks of the democratic process of his party, with the standard implications as usual as it pertains to the wider picture of how party politics in this country typically governs from issue to issue, with or without public consensus. There are always 'practical considerations' that have nothing to do with what people indicate they are for or against through a variety of means.
exactly so - he's not only acting like a typical party 'leader' in his elitist disregard for the wishes of his party members, but also a typical stupidity in not recognizing that advocating legalization would result in massive support at the ballot box. Another common trait is overdue concern with what Washington will think...used to be ndp wasn't he?
Yes..those are the practical concerns after all, what corporatism through Washington thinks. Those concerns seem unlikely to register different for any party, regardless of any charade of democracy enacted at conventions.
117: Legalize and Regulate Marijuana
http://convention.liberal.ca/justice/117-legalize-and-regulate-marijuana...
WHEREAS, despite almost a century of prohibition, millions of Canadians today regularly consume marijuana and other cannabis products..."
LOL this is funny...they are resortiing to NDP and Green Party points to try to get ahead and get my age group voting for them. We remember they did nothing on this line while in power!!!!!!!
Group Applauds Liberal Party Policy to Legalize Marijuana
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20120116/foundation-praises-liberal-mar...
"The Beyond Prohibition Foundation says weed could be a real cash crop for Canada. 'We're talking about $400 million that is spent every year arresting just about 50,000 people - plus or minus a few thousand people, depending on the year - and that's just for possession,' said Jacob Hunter, the Vancouver-based group's policy director.
The Fraser Institute, a conservative research group, did its own study in 2004 on potential reveues arising from legal marijuana and. like Hunter's group, came up with a $2 billion a year estimate.
'If we treat marijuana like any other commodity, we can tax it, regulate it, and use the resoureces the industry generates rather than continue a war against consuption and production that has long since been lost,' Stephen Easton, an economics professor at Simon Fraser University and the study's author, said in a release at the time."
Are You Ready For The Pot Debate, Mom and Dad?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/are-you-ready-for-the...
"...Former Ontario MP Andrew Telegdi supported it, arguing that prime ministers, justice ministers and even American presidents have admitted to smoking pot,' she writes. 'Let's not criminalize our youth,' he urged.
Are you ready for this to become a major national debate?
And do you think politicians need to be anything-but-lighthearted when it comes to the topic of legalizing marijuana?"
I'd like to see cannabis regulation be done at the provincial level where it belongs. I wish the NDP would propose to do it, at which point BC and Quebec could go first if they so chose.
Even now, after the big win the NDP are still afraid to push this forward. Of the leadership candidates, I have heard only Topp address it, and he only supports "decriminalization, the party policy".
Moving it to the provinces makes sense as that is where alcohol is regulated. And that is more democratic as well.
It's pathetic that this is still a "debate" in 2012.
What happened to all those flower children of the '60s, who were going to bring in so much change for us? Was that just a myth?
mostly...
I watched Easy Rider last night. Bummer of an ending (I've seen it before).
Easy Rider and Altamont (among other stuff) put an end to the flower children.
The most self-glorifying generation of the last century, if not last the three centuries, and they couldn't even legalize marijuana, the icon of their era?
You really have to wonder sometimes why they're passing up a cash cow.
LOL this is funny...they are resortiing to NDP and Green Party points to try to get ahead and get my age group voting for them. We remember they did nothing on this line while in power!!!!!!!
So you're in your fifties, sixties? Actually both Chretien and Martin tried to have it decriminilized but I don't see it ever happening here in Canada first, the DEA through the U.S. government simply exerts too much influence up here.
Former B.C. attorneys general call to legalize pot
On a personal note, I have very painful arthritis, and meds don't help. What's the process for obtaining medical pot? Just go to my physician?
In order to effectively milk this cash cow, they would still have to criminalize personal and commercial cultivation of the plant outside of regulatory oversight, along with unregulated distribution and sales, while at the same time de-criminalizing consumption and possession of the regulated product. In order use such laws as they might devise as a means to reap the profits, they would have to find a way to determine whether possessed marijuana found on a person was grown under the legal regime set down or not. It's something they can't fully control one way or another.