“The problem at the heart of Vancouver’s escalating gang violence (ie: dudes getting shot in the head while sitting in their trucks at the mall, while at the gym, while driving around kits, etc, etc) is drug prohibition. Not drugs.
And that’s an important distinction to make, the one between drug prohibition and the drugs themselves. Drugs don’t cause violence like Vancouverites are currently seeing. Drugs simply alter a human beings consciousness. They provide feelings of euphoria. They make you see things that aren’t really there. They numb pain – both physical and emotional. What they don’t do, and what drug prohibition does, is make a gangster pick up a submachine gun and kill other gangsters in public places. What causes that is the underlying human response called greed. Greed for the massive amounts of drug money that is sitting there for any takers willing to take the big risks.
Now, I don’t think that last paragraph is a very hard concept for people to understand. Yet for some reason most people are either unable or unwilling to see the truth in it. People are either too stupid, too lazy, or too disengaged to care. And it doesn’t help to have politicians and police who purposefully avoid this topic of discussion. Instead they focus on waging the drug war and waging it tougher when we fail. Guess what? We can’t win the drug war – why? Because it’s a war against supply and demand and we can’t alter that fundamental equation.
And while we try to avoid the reality that our current drug policies are a failure gangsters are getting rich and our streets are turning deadly. Oh, and don’t forget the addicts since we’re supposedly waging this drug war to help them. They’re all getting ignored and left to die in back alleys – what a great drug policy!
Inevitably there is always someone willing to take the risk to sell drugs because the money to be made on illegal drugs is astronomical. In B.C. alone the marijuana business is worth an estimated $7-8 billion a year to the economy. That’s just B.C. Bud, think about coke, meth, heroin, ecstasy, etc. And don’t forget that the majority of an illegal drugs value is due to the product being illegal, if they weren’t illegal they wouldn’t cost anywhere near as much as they do now.
At the very least it is definately time to legalize marijuana. All we’re doing right now by keeping pot illegal is handing over truck loads of cash to gangsters so they can use that money to cause more crime. Thousands of Canadians use cannabis and are otherwise law obeying citizens so it makes no sense for us to have them spend their money on a relatively safe product but have all the profit go to criminals. The government should get its cut. We’ve been making marijuana a drain on our coffers for far too long, its time for taxes on pot to recoup those loses. And in the process we’ll deal a huge blow to gangsters, which will reduce gang violence.
Ultimately the solution to drug trade violence is in our hands. It’s called using our vote to end the criminal prohibitions on recreational drugs. Support public policy that will end drug prohibition because that’s the only real way to end the violence on our streets.”
