My Insights

Now this is what I’m talking about. Yes you read it right … Canada may allow small amounts of marijuana. The decision (bad decision) to smoke marijuana has a serious penalty attached to it as of now. Canada is just decriminalizing the offense and making it a ticketable offense. “possession of up to 15 grams of marijuana, about half an ounce, would become punishable by fines of up to the equivalent of about $290 U.S. for adults and $182 for minors” (from washingtonpost.com). So in effect, if you are found possessing weed, you would get a ticket as opposed to getting arrested and getting a criminal record. This is reasonable as far as I think because I don’t think that possessing or smoking weed is a criminal act … its just bad for you like cigarettes and shouldn’t be done. The government should try to influence the decisions of people through programs and education but by no means should the government penalize ‘cruelly and unusually’ if a person does decide to smoke weed. Even our constitution guards us against cruel and unusual punishment … how is criminalization of marijuana justice then?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2003 at 2:35 am and is filed under News, Recovered Entries (01/19/2005), The Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.