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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gulo who wrote (2646)	5/20/2003 9:50:41 PM
From: marcos	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 37260

Agreed completely in principle, Gulo ... each person's body is their own, to do with as they will ... got to have it illegal to burn a whole bale of pot on a city lot, of course, because it could stain the whites on your neighbours' clotheslines, but that's well covered under environmental law, don't need a special statute for it On the practical side, there was a mountie interviewed a few days ago, he figured that 'decriminalisation' would result in more, not less, harassment and damage to young people .... reason being, as things stand the mounties basically do not enforce the law much, since they realise it is absurdly draconian and an intrusion on the liberty of the person ..... but if it was only a misdemeanour, he figured there would be a lot more charges, then people would be jailed for non-payment of fines .... he said in other jurisdictions [can't recall where], this has resulted in three times the imprisonment than had the previous felony classification

To: Gulo who wrote (2646)	5/21/2003 2:10:28 PM
From: SofaSpud	Respond to of 37260

I think my discomfort on the pot issue stems in part from the perception that this initiative is by no means an indication of a commitment to individual liberty. This is a one-off by some people whose development arrested somewhere ca. 1970. They've just increased the fine here for not wearing your seatbelt. I'm confident that the future of medicare will include discrimination on the basis of vice (alcohol, tobacco and the fat content of food, but not unsafe sex practices). In some places adults are required to wear bicycle helmets. That's the nanny state. It would have been unthinkable in the 1960s, when medicare was introduced, that the state would use the excuse of money to dictate intimate details of people's lives. Today the cost of medicare means that's very much on. What about a pregnant addict? There was a case in Manitoba a few years ago, where intervention was contemplated. FAS is irreversable, and the treatment costs society an estimated $3 million during the victim's lifetime. There is no philosophical framework in place for a discussion of the relative rights in this instance. My strong bias is for a very limited state. But this pot thing is a diversion, a tiny sapling in the forest of bureaucracy. We need the broader discussion, not this.