[420 Girl]

In the 1920s and early '30s, Chicago had Al Capone. Today the Lower Mainland has the Bacon brothers, only because they are in the news.

But their want to be assassins are somehow invisible. Alcohol prohibition or the "noble experiment" as it was called, was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America. It was a miserable failure on all counts.

Doesn't it sound familiar? Have we not learned from our past?

I find it ironic that MP Ed Fast will be Chairman of the federal government's Justice and Human Rights Committee and the first thing he wants to bring back is the draconian legislation of Bill C-26.

This bill alters the current drug laws raising the maximum penalty for certain offences and introducing mandatory minimum sentences for others. This is destructive legislation, which will criminalize ordinary people and ruin lives at the expense of the taxpayer.

Mandatory minimums are a favourite of U.S. law, but have never been attempted for drug laws in Canada.

Jails in the U.S. are inundated with people on minimum sentences. Many judges are against mandatory minimums because it strips power away from the judge to decide a fair sentence or outcome.

The power is put in the hands of the politicians hundreds of kilometres away who have no idea of the situation of the crime. You can go to jail for six months for growing one pot plant for your own use.

Marijuana prohibition has been studied repeatedly by the Canadian government. In 1972, the Le Dain Commission recommended reforming our laws and decriminalizing. Thirty years later, in 2002 the Senate concluded after two years of study and hundreds of witnesses, that we should end prohibition entirely and replace it with a regulated and taxed marketplace.

The Senate committee said unanimously that marijuana prohibition was more harmful to Canadians than the use of marijuana. Why are our tax dollars spent on studies that are not listened to?

The Fraser Institute studied marijuana prohibition and concluded that it was a "gift of revenue" to organized crime. Criminals are making billions of dollars tax free. That is a gift at our expense.

Please say no to Bill C-26 and yes to taxing and regulating marijuana.

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