[420 Girl]

VICTORIA — A Victoria-area member of Parliament will ask the federal government to decriminalize marijuana in a private member's bill Thursday.

Keith Martin, Liberal MP for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, wants the government to recommend fines instead of criminal charges for anyone caught by police with fewer than 30 grams of marijuana or two marijuana plants.

Decriminalizing simple possession will sever ties between casual drug users and organized crime, Martin said in an interview Wednesday. “If a person is growing a couple of their own plants, they won’t have to go out and purchase it from illegal sources, which are usually linked to crime gangs and illegal grow-ops.”

He pointed to the bloody gang wars in the Lower Mainland as an example of the “abysmal failure” of the war on drugs.

There have been 42 shootings in the region since Jan. 1, leaving 20 injured and 19 dead.

Martin has twice proposed similar private member’s bills — in 2002 and again in 2007 — but failed both times.

What’s different now, Martin said, is the move to decriminalize the possession of two marijuana plants, which would deter people from going to dealers to get their pot.

The move would save hundreds of millions of dollars on police enforcement and court costs to prosecute the crimes, said Martin, adding the money could instead be spent on substance-abuse prevention programs for youth.

One drug-legalization advocate said while the bill will remove the “unnecessary criminalization” of marijuana, it will not wipe out the multi-billion-dollar illegal drug market.

The only way to eliminate gang control is to legalize and regulate marijuana, said Philippe Lucas, a city councillor and executive director of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, a group that supports the medical use of marijuana.

“I’m supportive of the bill but I hope that it leads to dialogue about the harm prohibition is causing Canadians, exemplified by the gun violence we have seen in Toronto and Vancouver,” Lucas said.


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