Though they have virtually zero change of winning – to be fair, I’m not sure they even want to win any seats – the Marijuana Party of Saskatchewan is actually raising an important issue in the run up to the provincial election.
I think it’s about time weed use is discussed rationally in the public sphere. Despite the pointed rhetoric on weed’s every ill, we know now that the drug is not all that dangerous. Since we’ve started keeping score, no one has ever died from a marijuana overdose. We know the gateway theory (smoking weed will lead the user to harder, more dangerous drugs) has been shot to bits (since being legalized in Holland, during the 1970s, heroin and cocaine use has declined) and that it does not contain more carcinogens than cigarettes. But, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend everything we learnt from those grainy, grade 8 Health videos were true. Why then does the government allow us to smoke tobacco and not marijuana? Why does our government’s concern for our health exclude cigarettes and alcohol?
The answer, I think, is politically motivated. Canada is already the “Weed Capital” of world. We account for the greatest per capita marijuana usage of all industrialized countries. Police aren’t foaming to arrest people with a couple joints in their pockets either. Cannabis arrests have dropped from over 70,000 in 2001 to just under 60,000 in 2005. Still, a lot of lives have been altered, and a lot of money has been thrown at a drug that is much less harmful than ones which are still legal.
Now that a rational discussion has erupted in the political arena, we can talk about drugs without the pulpit exaggerations for which our representatives are so well renowned.
Tags: election, marijuana, saskatchewan
