[420 Girl]

Marc-Boris St-Maurice kicked off the Canadian ‘Resolving Marijuana Prohibition’ tour with a panel discussion at the Ottawa Public Library downtown on Jan. 26.

St-Maurice is the Canadian executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), a group formed originally in the United States to decriminalize the usage of marijuana. Guelph and Hamilton are the tour’s next stops and St-Maurice says he hopes they will be the first of many across the country.

The group’s philosophy of anti-prohibition stands on four pillars, which St-Maurice addresses in his video, Resolving Marijuana Prohibition: economic development, health and medicine, social justice and policy implementation.

The organization argues that legalizing marijuana would boost the Canadian economy much like lifting the prohibition on alcohol boosted the economy during the Great Depression. Furthermore, expenditures on policing and judiciary needs would decrease.

Although this argument presents the economic benefits of lifting prohibition, the four experts invited to sit on the panel at the Ottawa forum were undecided on the total economic impact.

“[The sale of marijuana] will not be the same in a legal market,” said Line Beauchesne, a professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa and member of the forum’s panel.

St-Maurice also highlighted that the legalization of the drug would greatly improve patients’ access to marijuana for medical reasons. Furthermore, he noted that a prohibition lift would end 100 years of commissions with exactly that objective.

The drugs by themselves cannot be harmful, said Tara Lyons, executive director of Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP) and panel member.

“Not creating the space for people to talk about the realities of drug use, that’s what creates the harm,” Lyons said.

Lyons also argues that the laws prohibiting marijuana in order to “save kids” are often the same laws that harm them. According to Lyons, 75 per cent of charges laid against youth aged 12-17 are related to the use of marijuana. These charges then show up on students’ criminal records and since many homeowners are asking for criminal record checks before renting their homes, it’s hard for students to find housing, Lyons said.

The legalization of marijuana is important to students because they “use marijuana and experiment with it,” said Tamara Kalnins, the fourth-year Carleton student who runs the CSSDP Carleton chapter.

Kalnins said she believes that the end of prohibition will mean a decrease in students’ criminal records.

At the end of the tour, St-Maurice plans to create and introduce The National Resolution for the Legalization of Marijuana, a proposal to the government about why they should remove the prohibition. This proposal should be ready by the fall, St-Maurice said.

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