Canada’s utterly failed drug policy

Our drug laws fuel organized crime and divert police resources.

Editorial Board, The National Post:

The only thing worse than prosecuting the War on Drugs as currently designed is prosecuting it with insufficient resources to even put the soldiers of the other side on trial. Canadians might well balk at a debate over decriminalizing hard drugs. But to the significant extent that the Angels and their rivals fought to control the cannabis market in Quebec, years of bloody street violence was expertly facilitated by the state.

The entire situation could have been cancelled out by liberating the cannabis market, which has only grown under decades of prohibition, from the criminal class. The resources thereby liberated could have been redirected, for example, towards the slothful justice system that’s threatening to let 31 drug-gang members go free.

And yet, shockingly, a Conservative Canadian government, which purports to understand capitalism, proposes to re-introduce legislation that would impose mandatory minimum sentences for small-scale marijuana growers. This ridiculous policy seems designed to keep the trade in the hands of criminal lowlifes, who police can then pursue and hopefully catch and prosecute — if there’s room in a courtroom and a judge is free some time in the next seven years, that is.

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