Legalizing Marijuana

I just watched a documentary recently called "Escape to Canada." It was about the summer of 2003 when for a brief moment in time both marijuana and same sex marriage were legal. Since then same sex marriage is still legal and going strong (yay civil rights!) but marijuana is back to being illegal. It is a great movie and I recommend that everyone should watch it, especially if you want to feel proud to be a Canadian. Even though weed is illegal now there were some very good arguments for legalizing it that I want to bring up. I should probably mention that I don't really have any vested interest in this because I don't smoke marijuana, but I do support legalization for the following reasons.
- It is the most commonly used illicit drug and in places like BC it is the number 1 agricultural crop.
- Massive amounts of money could be saved in police and law enforcement costs if the cops concentrated more on other crimes. Also legalizing weed would dramatically decrease the amount of illicit activity related to marijuana.
- Money made from marijuana tazation and regulation could go to support health care
- There would be increases in tourism (look at Amsterdam)
- In terms of its effects, people who use weed are less violent than drunks and there hasn't been a link yet to lung cancer (and if you are worried about the smoke you can always eat it!)
- marijuana is already used or could be used to treat lots of medical problems: cancer, MS, glaucome, gout etc.

I am sure there are more Pros than I have put in this list and I am purposely omitting the cons, but I think it is still a compelling list! Hopefully one day our country will be progressive enough to break away from the US and establish our own drug policies- which I hope include legalizing marijuana!

"Right of conscience"

This post is all about the controversial passage of a bill in the US called the "right of conscience." The original article can be found here.

Basically the proposition is to expand a health care workers right to decline providing treatments that they are not comfortable with on religious grounds. Specifically abortion and birth control. I am fine with that part of it (mostly). What I am not ok with is the fact that this new law will also allow with holding of information AND referrals for birth control, abortion etc. This is ridiculous. Part of a health care worker's duty is to provide patients the best standard of care possible. This should be regardless of any moral or other objections we may have to the treatment they are asking for (as long as that treatment is legal of course). This makes me extremely angry and is just another reason why we should actually enforce separation of church and state!