WHEREAS federal laws prohibit the production, distribution, possession and use of numerous drugs and narcotics;
WHEREAS the government creates and enforces drug related laws for the purpose of reducing the consumption of illegal drugs and reducing drug related crimes;
WHEREAS violent crimes are often triggered by the effects of drugs;
WHEREAS violence in homes and communities is often prompted by drug related conflicts;
WHEREAS crimes such as smuggling, possession, trafficking and manufacturing are committed;
WHEREAS theft crimes are often committed by users in order to obtain drugs;
WHEREAS punishment for drug related criminal offences often includes incarceration and probation services costing the justice system millions of dollars every year;
BE IT RESOLVED that a Liberal Government emphasize prevention and rehabilitation programs within communities as well as in house programs in the federal penal system.
Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island
The war on drugs is a diguise for one of the major players that makes up the ongoing war on humanity.The so called war on drugs continue to inflict great harms and injustices on humans around the world.From south american farmers who are already dirt poor in lots of cases,being uprooted by the army that is sent in to burn there crops and everything materially they have,imprisonment and killings as part of the ongoing tyranny.To over a million nonviolant americans who are incarcerated for drug offences,etc….Now canadians will be subject to the same injustice as the americans,with the crime bills currently in process.A society does not condone or promote drug use when they exercise practcal and useful solutions to the drug abuse problem,rather than condemming so many to useless and inhumane sufferings such as incarceration.The LPC could forge new roads to effective national policies that would address the drug problems,there are solutions.For now the big bully on the block rules,and the war on drugs smokescreen continues,and now its poisonous strike increases tragically for the canadian people.
What a misleading title. Everyone should know that alcohol is the biggest offender in this supposed war on illegal drugs. Alcohol is still the leading element that causes absenteeism, 24 hour flu, and keeps on killing Canadians everyday either directly or via drunk drivers. Illegal substances are a problem, education and prevention will go a long way to rid us of this thorn. The harsher punishment should be aimed at the producers or as Randy so rightly calls them “the major players”. Our law enforcement officers are not equipped to fight this battle, they do the best they can with the tools that government provides. If government had the will to eradicate illegal substances would we have to worry about Justice ?
Justice means different things to different people and at different times in their lives. After being beat over the head with a stick justice means beating the guy back twice as hard, your head is not going to stop hurting, by at least you will feel revenged.
What does justice mean to a society? It should mean making restitution so that the victim knows it was make (not that the victim defined the restitution), and not having the offender, offend again.
SMART ON CRIME, I like that. This would be smart on crime.
I’ve read somewhere that 85% of the crime in the country is related to drugs. That most of the money that the crime organizations make are from drugs. So we need to look at who has an interest in keeping the status quo:
1) The Drug Importers
2) The Manufacturers of Illegal Drugs
3) The Criminal organizations that distribute the
drugs.
4) The local Crime Boss, and his front people.
5) The people selling drugs on the street corners.
6) The people selling drugs on our school grounds.
You all know of these guys, but have you considered:
7) The lawyers who defend the criminals in court.
8) The lobbyists who are working the halls of
government and justice.
9) The police force, who receive funding based on the
size of the Drug problem. The police have no
interest at all in catching the the drug pushers
and closing down their organizations.
10) How about our prisons, without drug offenders they
would have to close half of them.
11) Judges, Crown Prosecutors, court personal etc.
12) How about the whole drug enforcement system.
The list just goes on and on: All these people have an interest in keeping the system as it is.
So how do we stop it?
To stop it you need to take the profit motive out of it.
So how do we do this?
Well let’s start by treating drug addiction as a disease (which it is) and giving the addicts prescriptions for
their drugs. You then have a chance to reach these people and maybe turn their lives around, at the very least you take them off the street. Reducing street crime, break and entries, prostitution, muggings etc.
Addicts would be getting cleaner drugs, and clean needles, reducing the costs to the health care system.
This is complicated and start up is costly, no where near as costly as the crime it would replace, and the legal system the drug trade supports. Complicated yes, not as complicated as the system we are running now.
Next step legalize recreational drugs, and sell them through government outlets. Costly start up but would very quickly pay the cost of the whole preventive system. Also, people would be getting cleaner drugs, and would be less likely to try street drugs.
There would be very little reason for the development of new recreational drugs, (no money in it).
There would be no one at our schools pushing drugs at our children.
Our Police and court system could be refocused on other hard core crime problems.
Over time, the number of addicted people would drop, but the big change would be people coming into the system from the hard drug side of things.
There would no longer be a profit motive, at least not on any great scale.
It seems to me that our hands may be tied to some extent when the newspapers report that the major ports in the country (Vancouver; Halifax; Charlottetown and Montreal) have been infiltrated by the mafia. How on earth do we intend to regulate a product over which we have no control in its distribution?
I would rather tackle this problem first.
(from the Library of Congress)see below:
Canadian Ports
quote from http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/AsianOrgCrime_Canada.pdf
“According to a March 2002 article in the National Post, a Canadian Senate committee on national security, which met in February 2002, identified Canada’s ports as a breeding ground for organized crime and terrorism.23 In 1996, when the government began to disband the port
police service, private security companies began assuming security responsibilities at Canadian ports. The senate committee reported that 36 percent of employees in charge of going over manifest lists for cargo containers at the port of Montreal, 39 percent of the dock workers at Halifax, and 54 percent of the dock workers at the Charlottetown port had criminal records.24 In addition, several ports do not have adequate identification requirements for employers nor do
they have adequate security fencing. Organized crime groups reportedly exercise great control over Canadian ports and have been cited as major conduits for drug smuggling, the export and import of stolen automobiles, and the theft of cargo. Officials fear that terrorists could use the ports to smuggle a weapon of mass destruction into the country.25 The committee additionally reported that the Chrétien
government had been receiving warnings on the state of Canada’s ports for six years, but continued to ignore the advice of law enforcement officials.
see footnote below:
23 The Canadian senate report also recommends that Canada increase military spending by $4 billion a year and
increase the size of the military from 20,000 to 75,000. Canada currently spends approximately 1.2 percent of its
GDP on defense, roughly half of what other NATO members allocate.
Library of Congress – Federal Research Division Asian Criminal and Terrorist Activity in Canada
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/182e70f0-271d-11e0-80d7-00144feab49a.html #axzz1f9u1Fb2Q
The issue is not just tough on crime, the issue is SMART ON CRIME.
Pingback:
The one thing I am concerned about is the consumption of marijuana in public space. Marijuana users have gotten really bold in Montreal and I regularly encounter people smoking it downtown while I am trying to commute. One time standing in line for a film at Fantasia Festival I got high overtime just from being behind somebody else a few people in front of me. Laugh if you want but I think Canadians should consider seriously if you want this kind of thing on the street all the time, impairing you against your will? To all marijuana advocates I will never support legalization until you guys get serious and work on your attitude, be polite, and keep it out of sight and out of my mind. Just because you smoke pot, doesn’t mean young children with their families and pregnant mothers do.
Ecstasy needs regulation more so than marijuana.
young people want this drug, and they are given bogus concoctions of chemicals that damage their health, frequently encountered in the underground drug trade is supposedly pure ecstasy tablets that are actually full of meth. this is the #1 risk to young people.
regulate ecstasy? lets pick a battle that we can win. i am from alberta origionally and a former conservative supporter, since they nolonger practice representative goverment i can no longer support them, the ndp has no balls and will only deregulate it which means they are to scared to do anything, so i hope my recent conversion to the liberals is not a mistake. daniel gill you are off the wall if your attitude towards gay marriage was the same as pot you would be a bigot but it is still politically correct to attack pot users, we are not polite because for my whole life we have been persecuted for choosing marijuana over alcohol while others are free to do what they prefer such as religion, alcohol, sugar and junk food, or any other reality distorter, if you don’t support the liberals veiw of legalizing pot then why not join the ndp, or with your self-righteous, intolerant veiws become a conservative, i doubt you got high off second hand smoke, you probably did too much ecstasy and were just tripping. Having used both substances i would say that i would rather pot be legalized as it is a natural plant not a refined substance, maybe you should lay off the ecstasy, smoke a joint and quit judging people who are diffrent from you. if diversity is to much for you then move to alberta and join a fundamentalist group that hates pot but wants to legalize ecstasy. alcohol is legal to consume just not in public we are talking about making it like booze, but since you only do ECSTASY i guess you don’t drink too!