Tories may take the wind out of Justin Trudeau's only policy plan

OTTAWA — As the year ends, Justice Minister Peter MacKay is strongly hinting that steps to modernize Canada's marijuana laws might be just around the corner.

Fining pot smokers for possession of small amounts is one policy the government will likely consider.

"That doesn't mean decriminalizing or legalizing, but it does mean giving police options, for example, to issue fines in addition to any other sanctions, or as a substitute for other sanctions," MacKay told QMI Agency. "These are things that we are willing to look at in the new year, but there's been no decision taken."

This is the first time the Conservatives have mentioned the idea since Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the feds were looking "very carefully" at it in August.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police says fining pot smokers may be just the ticket to give officers an option other than ignoring law-breakers or criminally charging them, setting up a long, expensive legal process.

How will the liberals handle this? Rob Ford says he smoked "a lot" of marijuana

Well, if it's "cool" and "brave" of Justin Trudeau to fess up to smoking marijuana, then the same should be true of Rob Ford, shouldn't it.

Why will I not be surprised if there is a cacophony of leftist outrage at Ford smoking pot....?

Canada's "Prince of Pot" claims a hypocritical Justin Trudeau smoked hashish with him on a number of occasions

"Pierre Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, for better or worse, depending on how you feel, smoked hashish, and his son has smoked with me four or five times, so it really pisses me off when I see Justin Trudeau, who took big gaggers with me, is in parliament, actually voting for Bill C-15."

- Marc Emery

h/t Blazing Cat Fur

Stick a Liberal politician in front of 2 different audiences and you'll get 2 conflicting policies out of them

Reason Magazine's 3 reasons Mitt Romney lost

NDP Leader Mulcair flip-flops on marijuana decriminalization

More here

It's an interesting world where NDP leader Mulcair is siding with Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper on this issue while Liberal Leader Bob Rae is on the same side as TV evangelist Pat Robertson

Conrad Black on drugs

No! Not that way!  He's writing about the Conservative government's proposed mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, and Black makes a lot of sense.

Stephen Harper's position on marijuana laws are archaic, illogical and anti-libertarian. Alcohol does extensive damage to many people, but in a free society, we allow people to make choices rather than have the state do it for them. Marijuana is no more harmful than alcohol and the hypocrisy of criminalizing one and not the other undermines any morality to those laws.

Most police chiefs in North America recognize that enforcing laws against it is not only ineffective but a waste of both scarce police and court resources.

The libertarian movement seeks to legalize and tax marijuana, and Canadians can lobby their government to turn the liability of antiquated nanny-state regulations into a revenue producing asset.

Here's an excerpt of what Black (along with Evan Wood) wrote (full column can be seen at The National Post):

..the argument that locking up more drug dealers improves community safety is flatly untrue. Research clearly demonstrates that gun violence is a common and natural result of many a successful drug bust, and often occurs when remaining gangs fight over the new economic opportunity that police have unwittingly created. California is an excellent example of this sad reality. The state now has a prison budget that exceeds expenditures on post-secondary education, and yet the intractable gang violence that is directly linked to the drug trade has only been inflamed by these efforts.

Clearly, we need new approaches to address the drug problem. Writing recently in the Globe and Mail, former federal Conservative party campaign manager Tom Flanagan noted that “Some prominent Canadian conservatives, such as former Fraser Institute president Michael Walker, Conservative MP Scott Reid, legal writer Karen Selick and financial journalist Terence Corcoran, have led the way in decrying drug prohibition, but their position has to become more appreciated within the conservative movement.”

One can only hope that this happens soon. Failed mandatory minimum sentencing legislation is currently being repealed in various U.S. states, including New York, Michigan, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and it will be a sad legacy for Canadian conservatives if we sit quietly and ignore how U.S. society has been remarkably weakened by the same laws our government is now hell-bent on enacting.

How Ignatieff can improve on his stagnant support in one word: Marijuana

Michael Ignatieff 's Liberals are the only viable national alternative to the governing Conservatives, but they remain stagnant in the polls. The ex-Oxford professor is smart but uncharismatic, and lacks the common touch that politicians like Jean Chretien and Bill Clinton were able to make long political careers out of.

Stephen Harper, no Mr. Excitement himself, has created the impression that he has preserved our economic standing through hazardous global upheavals, and compared to Ignatieff, he's practically Harrison Ford in popular appeal.

But the Conservatives have some wonky, anti-libertarian, nanny-state policies ripe for exploitation by the Liberals, if only they had the courage to take them on.

One of these is Harper's antiquated, uninformed marijuana policy.

Police chiefs all over Canada realize that enforcing marijuana laws is impractical and pointless. Cops themselves (even the ones who don't smoke pot) don't take marijuana possession seriously as a crime, while most people who understand its effects know that it is far less damaging to society than alcohol.

Stoned drivers aren't responsible for thousands of traffic accidents and fatalities every year. Stoned members of the public aren't likely to be hyper-aggressive and pick bar fights. While the government treats the public as adults when it comes to alcohol consumption, it makes a hefty profit for public coffers through related taxes and jobs at the same time. But in the case of marijuana, we have paternalistic laws that are a waste of  money and resources to enforce, to no real avail, and benefit no one but criminals who sell contraband.

It might be Ignatieff's only chance to stand out and shift the public debate to an area where he can go on the offensive if he were to attack Harper's unsound position on cannabis laws. We know just about every Canadian politician who supports legal sanctions against marijuana is a hypocrite who has partaken of the weed at some point.

Rather than enforcing anti-marijuana legislation that creates criminals while benefiting crime lords, why not legalize and tax it, creating jobs for Canadians and a new source of government revenue?

The only demographic group that has given the Liberals a lead over the Conservatives in polls is the under 25 year-olds. But this age group is traditionally unexcited by politics and is the most likely not to bother to vote. If Ignatieff were to propose legalizing and taxing marijuana, he could latch on to an issue that actually would excite and motivate that demographic group.

If he has the guts to take that step remains to be seen. I'm not betting on Ignatieff doing that, but if he did, it would make the May 2 election a lot more exciting than being just a question of whether Stephen Harper gets a big or a small majority government.

The Marijuana Policy Tipping Point

From Reason TV:

Christopher Fichtner is a psychiatrist and the former mental health director for the state of Illinois. In his new book, Cannabinomics: The Marijuana Policy Tipping Point, Fichtner predicts that marijuana policy is about to change radically. As Fichtner points out, three public policy trajectories converging. The medical marijuana movement is gaining momentum. People are increasingly wakening up to the fact that drug prohibition creates more public health problems than it solves. And, in the same way that the Great Depression caused people to reprioritize how we spend our public dollars, the current economic crisis has got people thinking that bringing the biggest cash crop in the US out into the open might not be such a bad idea.

California Pot Smokers may have more disposable income soon.

In November, Californians will vote on Proposition 19, which allows for the cultivation and possession of cannabis for personal use while authorizing local governments to allow commercial production and sale. This would move marijuana into a legal, regulated market, transforming criminals into consumers.

The measure has support from prominent advocates like former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, who believes the US should control, legalize and tax marijuana.

Reason's senior editor Jacon Sullum makes the point that the price of marijuana would decline substantially, giving Californians more money to spend elsewhere, providing a potential stimulus to the state economy.