On decriminalization of marijuana Unpublished Letter to the Editor, submitted to the Vancouver Sun November 16, 1995 By Kay Stockholder The B.C. Civil Liberties Association submitted a brief to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs critical of Bill C-7, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act on the general grounds that marijuana should be decriminalized, and the specific grounds that this bill makes no substantial move in that direction, and in some respects paves the way for more severe responses to infringements of the law regarding marijuana. The single way in which the law may be seen as more liberal than existing legislation is that it defines simple possession of small amounts of marijuana as a summary rather than a hybrid offence (one that can be either summary or indictable at the discretion of the Crown). It thereby eliminates the need to fingerprint offenders, and in that way might make the criminal record untraceable, if, in fact, the authorities restrained themselves from their impulses to fingerprint as many people as possible. However, while from the Canadian point of view this provision might cancel a criminal record, it would not according to American law. Indeed, a convicted offender at the U.S. border who claimed to have no criminal record could be subject to severe punishment for having lied. Other provisions of the bill lean toward greater severity. First, the bill defines the purpose of sentencing as "to contribute to respect for the law, the maintenance of a just, peaceful, and safe society, while encouraging rehabilitation and treatment in appropriate circumstances of offenders and acknowledging harm done to victims and to the community." Except for the first item, these criteria do not apply to marijuana possession or trafficking at all, for, as will be argued below, marijuana use does not endanger society, users do not need rehabilitation, and they have victimized no one. That being so, it is the law itself that tends to undermine respect for the law. Second, the powers of search and seizure given the police are too broad. They can search without a warrant if there are "exigent circumstances" but the bill does not mandate a "reasonable grounds" criterion for declaring them. It enables to police to search any person on premises for which it has a search warrant, or has been declared as coming under exigent circumstances, and to confiscate any property they "is used in any manner in connection with the commission of a designated substance offence". Under that vague and broad mandate, the police could confiscate a car in which a person smoked marijuana, and the power could extend to real property if, in their judgement, such property was built or significantly modified in order to facilitate the offending conduct. Conceivably, a house could be confiscated if a green house had been built to grow pot. Third, the bill might seem more lenient in reducing the punishment for an indictable offence from seven years to five years less a day, but any offence that carries a punishment of five years or more must be tried by jury. By reducing the maximum punishment, C-7 makes it easier for the Crown to get convictions, and makes it more likely that the police would bring more charges. Fourth, the bill makes no provision for facilitating the medical use of marijuana, despite increasing knowledge of its benefits. Like the legislation it replaces, it allows the Minister to make exemptions for medical and scientific purposes, but the process of getting exemptions is sufficiently complicated to discourage doctors from attempting it. This bill should not be passed. What should happen instead is the decriminalization of marijuana. The arguments the BCCLA made in 1969 against the criminalization of marijuana use still obtain. In that year the report of the Ouiment Committee on Corrections set forth three conditions under which an act should be defined as criminal: that it can be shown to be "substantially damaging to society" that it demonstrably cannot be "dealt with by non-criminal legal processes" that it does not "give rise to social or personal damage greater than that is was designed to prevent". The criminalization of marijuana use, possession and distribution violates all three of these criteria. That adults who use marijuana neither endanger themselves or society has been demonstrated by various studies, summarized by Paul Hager for the Indiana Civil Liberties Union in 1992. The myths that it causes brain damage, or injures the reproductive and immune systems have no foundation in fact, and it does not flatten brain waves, nor impair short term memory beyond the time of its immediate impact. It has been shown to be less addictive than tobacco; it is not associated with violence; and while it is undesirable to drive while stoned, doing so causes fewer accidents than does drunk driving. There is no evidence that its use incapacitates adults from fulfilling their responsibilities, either in the work place or in the home, or that children suffer at the hands of parents who use marijuana. It has also been argued that the marijuana available today is much stronger than it was previously; however, there has been no evidence that this stronger strain poses any greater dangers than weaker ones. Because people using marijuana typically smoke only enough to get high, they smoke less of the stronger marijuana. Some of the popular fear of decriminalizing marijuana is based on the slippery slope argument, according to which the use of marijuana leads inevitably to hard drug addiction. Not only does this claim lack evidence, but recent research has found that the use of hard drugs and alcohol declined in those states which have legalized marijuana. Further, the Cain report produced for the Chief Coroner's Office of British Columbia in September 1994 recommended that the "...Ministry of the Attorney General enter into discussions with the Federal ministers of Justice and Health on the propriety and feasibility of decriminalizing the possession and use of specified substances" by people addicted to them, and also there be serious inquiry into "the merits of legalizing the possession of some of the so-called soft drugs such as marijuana". What dangers marijuana does pose can be better dealt with by non-criminal processes, the most obvious being its use by children. There is no reason to discount the common testimony of parents and other adults that its steady use by children can seriously interfere with their education and induction into the normal modes of functioning in our society. However, it could be kept out of children’s hands more easily were it decriminalized than is possible now. Were marijuana regulated as alcohol and tobacco are now, even though some children would undoubtedly still manage to get it, just as they do alcohol and cigarettes, its effect would be considerably less damaging than it is when the use of marijuana has the allure of the exotic, associates them with a criminal subculture, and encourages disrespect for the law. Despite the overwhelming evidence that marijuana should be legalized, and despite the opposition of many the Addiction Research Foundation, the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse, the Canadian and Quebec Bar Associations, the Criminal Lawyers Association, the Canadian Medical Association, and the Canadian Public Health Association, all of whom opposed C-7 in its present form, a subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Health and Welfare did not change it. The net affect of this law would be to imprison more Canadians for minor offences, to increase the size of the drug culture, and to spend more public money on law enforcement and the prison system. It injures us in two further ways; the bill deprives us of the substantial medicinal benefits of marijuana, it deprives the federal coffers of much needed tax dollars that could be collected on legalized marijuana, and it limits the cultivation of hemp as a valuable crop of multiple uses. Since the weight of professional opinion of every kind leans towards decriminalizing marijuana, it is hard to understand why our legislators would advance so unproductive a proposal, unless in response to American pressure to enforce its international drug policies. The continued criminalization of marijuana violates a most fundamental principle of democratic societies, classically voiced by John Stuart Mill, that the law should not interfere in the private lives of citizens except to prevent clear and serious social harm that cannot be addressed in any other way. Since there is no evidence of any social harm deriving from the use of marijuana, and there is not even evidence that its use harms the user, we urge all interested citizens to oppose the passage of this law as vigorously as possible both because it does harm rather than good to people and because it constitutes and unwarranted invasion of our civil liberties.