Fifty years on, I still wince in recalling those two frightened high school kids I saw hauled into an Oshawa courtroom and handed stiff jail terms, two years less a day, for possessing miniscule amounts of marijuana.<\/p>\n
They weren\u2019t dealers. They were just teens dabbling in the latest thing, but they had the misfortune of being the first \u201cdrug arrests\u201d in a tough, beer-swilling automotive city that was close to hysteria over the arrival of dirty, long-haired hippies and their damn weed.<\/p>\n
Those kids would be senior citizens now, but I still wonder what became of them. Were their lives ruined by that jail time and the criminal records that followed them everywhere? Or did they move on and become brain surgeons and bank presidents?<\/p>\n
I get the argument behind decriminalizing marijuana consumption. Nobody should do jail time for simply consuming a product less damaging, at least to the liver, than alcohol. If deterrence was the intent of those harsh marijuana sentences, they utterly failed. By the early 1970s, it was all but impossible to attend a social gathering without being handed a joint and expected to partake, at least a polite puff or two, or be labelled a pariah.<\/p>\n
But the pendulum has swung. The anti-weed hysteria of the late \u201960s has become raging 21st-century fury that anyone would dare voice concerns about the fallout of Justinian Canada becoming only the second nation to give marijuana its full blessing.<\/p>\n
Mayor Drew Dilkens ran afoul of the pot crusaders and their missionary zeal three weeks ago when he described, in this space, how a trip to Denver, Colo., where marijuana was legalized four years ago, left him worried about the possible impact on a border city like Windsor. On the 16th Street pedestrian mall, he had encountered throngs of aggressive \u201criff-raff and undesirables.\u201d Denver\u2019s mayor has gone even further, decrying the area\u2019s \u201cscourge of hoodlums.\u201d<\/p>\n
Enraged readers dumped on Dilkens. They ripped him for being out-of-touch with the times and failing to recognize a potential tourism bonanza for our downtown. They mocked him for being concerned for his safety in Denver and wailed that he was trying to deny them their precious medicinal marijuana.<\/p>\n
Never mind that Dilkens never mentioned medical marijuana and didn\u2019t say whether he\u2019s for or against legalization. Facts don\u2019t matter. All that matters is that he wasn\u2019t out front leading the marijuana welcoming parade, pompoms in hand, and that merited condemnation.<\/p>\n
The most interesting message Dilkens received after the column appeared came from someone who actually knows what he\u2019s talking about.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a Colorado sheriff who\u2019s had to deal with the impacts of commercialized marijuana, I will tell you that your concerns are warranted,\u201d wrote Justin Smith, the outspoken sheriff of Larimer County, population 334,000, an hour\u2019s drive north of Denver.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince we approved commercial marijuana production and sales, we\u2019ve been overrun by transients and transient-related crime. In the last three years my jail population has soared by more than 25 per cent. Six years ago, transients accounted for one-in-eight inmates in my jail. Today, they account for one-in-three inmates and many have multiple pending cases. Our county prosecutor predicts a 90 per cent increase in felony crime prosecutions over the last three years.<\/p>\n
\u201cDecriminalized marijuana has proven to be anything but safe and well-regulated in my state,\u201d the sheriff warned. \u201cIf I could give your country any words of wisdom, they would be, don\u2019t sell the future of your country to the pot industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Too late, sheriff. The industry, now in the clutches of powerful corporations and feverish investors, is slathering over the immense profits to be made now that our flower child PM has given them the all clear.<\/p>\n
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel joked a few nights ago that Canada is becoming \u201cthe stoner in America\u2019s attic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Funny, yes.\u00a0\u00a0 But insightful as well.\u00a0 Next summer, when the stoners and those who feed off them occupy our downtown, which will be enveloped in the acrid stench of burning weed, we\u2019ll see who\u2019s laughing.<\/p>\n
Source:http:\/\/www.theprovince.com\/opinion\/columnists\/henderson+laughing+when+recreational+legalized\/13316471\/story.html<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fifty years on, I still wince in recalling those two frightened high school kids I saw hauled into an Oshawa courtroom and handed stiff jail terms, two years less a day, for possessing miniscule amounts of marijuana. They weren\u2019t dealers. They were just teens dabbling in the latest thing, but they had the misfortune of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,90,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-global-drug-legalisation-efforts","category-social-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}