Reader Bruce shares his observations on the gated-community community in the comments;
I had a number of lawyers that I considered friends who subsequently became judges. Intelligent people, reasonable people (at least at the time). I have never, ever been able to figure out what exactly happened to some them after they were elevated to the bench.
One example, and this is after I left drug enforcement; I believe I was on homicide at the time. The RCMP arrested a notorious drug importer, and someone that I had been chasing (and had caught a few times) for years when I was still doing that type of work. He was a vicious, nasty guy who had become filthy rich by importing copious quantities of drugs, of all kinds, into Canada.
A judge, a friend of mine, presided over the trial. It was a slam-dunk case. He was convicted. All of the precedents called for a very lengthy prison term, especially considering the previous lengthy record of the accused. The judge ( I’ll call him Doug because, well, because that is his name) ignored the submissions of the Crown calling for a sentence of between 12 to 20 years) and sentenced the man to 18 months. This meant he would be out on day parole in 3 months. Needless to say, the druggie was led from the court, snickering – even HE thought the judge was an idiot..
A couple of weeks later I had occasion to have dinner with Doug, the judge. The issue of this case came up in conversation. I expressed my shock at the sentence, pointed out that this particular offender was one of the biggest dealers, at least in western Canada, that he had in the past actually put out contracts to kill police officers and that he had been responsible for killing several associates and/or competitors.
The response: “But Bruce, it was only marihuana”.
My response: “But Doug, it was FOUR TONS of marihuana.”.
“Historically, legal drugs led to abuse and an increase in addicts.”
The Dutch have legalized pot and they smoke less of it than their neighbors. Alochol consumption in the US also trended down after prohobition ended.
“Yes, we are all in favour of the freedom of the individual, but, but, what happens when that individual freedom infringes on someone else’s freedom?”
Not sure how this applies in this case. More like “I’m all in favour of the rights that I personaly want to use myself and screw the rest”.
So, how many suicide vests did that 4 tons provide for. Or how many homes have been destroyed because of the grow ops in them.
Drugs, like prostitution have been around for eons and will even be here after global warming is solved. It would be interesting to know how many doctors, lawyers, accountants, civil servants politicians etc have made stupid errors while under the influence. If they don’t have any affect on you, why use them.
this from the front page of the vancouver Sun august 29 2005:
“accused drug smuggler doesnt have to file late tax returns: court”
describes the goofball decision by the federal court of canukistan on the grounds that forcing the suspect to file taxes would create evidence that the rcmp could get a warrant on, ergo the canukistan version of ‘fifth amendment’ applies.
corollary?
if you have something to hide in your taxes, dont file them, and then do something to get you just *suspected* of drug smuggling.
ta da !!!
welcome to da great white nort’ !!!
un freakin believable, er, unbelievaBULL.
batb:
“if Judge Doug had thrown the book at the guy which, obviously, he should have, Judge Doug’s life expectancy might have been drastically shortened.
This is how the bullies are winning everywhere”
if this is the explanation, then any and all judgey judges who fear for their safety should resign and create a vacancy for someone else more gutsy and responsible.
This was a very bad example to use. 4 tons of cannabis can be dangerous if improperly stored; if stored high up on a shelf without proper safeguards it could potentially crush someone to death if it fell and the person was standing underneath.
I’m curious if the prohibitionist group on this thread don’t use cannabis because:
(a) it is illegal or
(b) they have made a personal choice not to use it.
Interestingly, use of cannabis among young people in Holland, where it is decriminalized, is significantly lower than in N. America where it is illegal. I’m not sure what the prohibitionists are afraid of. The only effects of decriminalization I can see is that fewer people would be having their lives destroyed by the legal system, many criminals would be out of work, and a large number of politicians and police would have to look elsewhere for funding than from their friends in the illegal drug business.
The primary health hazards of cannabis are legal and it is significantly less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco.
Prohibitionist drug laws are inherently evil and about the only good thing I can say about Bill C68 is that it made a large number of gun owners suddenly understand the logic of the anti-prohibitionist crowd. In BC, an absolute majority of the population are either pot smokers or gun owners and having laws which make the majority of the population of a portion of the country into criminals does very little to engender respect for the law. Nearly every gun owner I know is a criminal on paper since none of the people I shoot with have registered all of their guns; it ranges from a couple of rifles they use to hunt or take routinely to the range to none of their firearms.
Bad laws are made to be broken and I’m glad to see that people in Vancouver give prohibition the respect it deserves by smoking openly in the streets.
The criminal aspect of prohibition is entirely separate from the effects of drugs such as cannabis. Remove the totalitarian laws and the criminals will move on to something else.
I agree that that the only truly effective way to combat the drug trade is to completely legalize all drug use but given that this concept is politically impractical much more severe levels of incarceration for trafficing should be implemented.
Yes, ET, it’s me, Vitruvius. So now there are two things we disagree about. As I explained above, I think that on this matter there are valid utilitarian arguments to be made, and there are valid individualism arguments to be made. I also think that there are ways to deal with losers, without excessively penalizing those who are not.
Ergo, I think what we are dealing with here are issues of pragmatism, not matters of absolutist ideology. I do not worship at the altar of Benthamite utility, though I admire its flying buttresses. The biggest enemies of reasonable pragmatism are the absolutist prohibitionists. Look at the Wahabbis. That’s never worked, in 10,000 years; why should it start working now? We don’t even absolutely prohibit homicide — not if it’s in self defense.
Drugs are chemicals. They do chemical things. There are very many chemical things I very much like. Polyvinyl chloride, say, or penicillin, for example. Of course, even penicillin can kill people who react poorly to it, nearly took my sister out once. But I still don’t think that chemicals should be prohibited — what would I make my cheese out of?
My body has not been rapidly corrupted, and my brain has not turned to mush, even though I’ve not been a teetotaler for soon to be four decades. My doctors tell me that there’s a significant chance I may die slightly earlier as a result of the side-effects of my behaviour, with a Gaussian probability of a foreshortening of my life by about three to five years, unless of course I get hit by a bus first. They have not mentioned that my brain will turn to mush, and so then that I will do bad things to others. I have stashed away a few hundred thousand extra dollars to look after any medical mediation I may decide to seek in the end game, without burdening others on that matter, while still contributing millions of dollars of taxes to the supposed benefit of all.
Therefore, as I see it, on this matter, my behaviour is my business, not yours. If you want to go after bad guys, based on their behaviour toward others, independent of their inputs, then fine, I’m with you. But if you want to go after good guys solely based on their inputs, then I’m against you.
I realize that tyranny can drive good people underground. I understand Metropolis. I don’t think it’s a good thing. I would rather deal with losers dieing in the streets than see a good man persecuted by totalitarian absolutists.
”It somewhat surprises and saddens me that to this day, now in the third millennium, there are otherwise intelligent people, including SDA commenters who I otherwise respect, who remain prohibitionists….”
So, vitruvius, how would you explain this contradiction from those who want our military to fight for freedom on foreign soil, yet don’t believe in freedom here at home?
”Something stinks here”
I agree, BCer, to high heaven.
I would explain it as good honest people who want to try to make the world a better place but who, in my opinion, are wrong on this matter. Just remember, it’s only my opinion, it’s not that important. There are over six billion people who don’t care what I think.
Maryjane – what a silly statement; kindly define ‘freedom’. Do you mean the freedom to live and get an education versus being beheaded for going to school?
Vitruvius – what’s the other thing on which we disagree?
Agreed – against the absolutists – of any stripe, Wahhabists or…
Penicillin, to my knowledge, is not addictive. Now, doesn’t the whole crux of your argument rest on your ability to control yourself? This would remove any connections to addictive substances, wouldn’t it?
I’m going to overlook the various argumentative tactics you’ve used (references to Dr. X and Dr. Y) – after all, I could readily find Dr. Non-X and Dr. Non-Y. I’ll focus around your key argument, which is the right of the individual to choose their activities and, the ability to be in control of these choices.
I think this is a basic epistemological argument and there is no final answer.
Does an individual with a terminal disease have the right to choose to die – in a manner without pain? ( My own view is ‘yes’).
Does an individual have the right to choose a mode of life that will remove from them the ability to make choices? Addictive drugs such as heroin, cocaine, do that. The drug then does indeed, turn the brain ‘to mush’. (My own view is ‘no’).
Does an individual have the right to choose behaviour that enriches them but harms others (as a drug runner, as an extortionist, as a, an, um, er..a lawyer?)
And so on. I don’t think that the infrastructure based solely around the ‘will of the individual’ can take us far. How far does an individual extend? I’m sure you know Duncan Watts ‘Six Degrees’.
It is only your opinion, but you do, however strive for some measure of intellectual/philisophical consistency, while those good, honest people would appear to distain it. Some opinions have more value than others.
ET..In this context I mean the freedom from some busybody dictating what intoxicants one may or may not ingest, as well as from some Taliban proscribing music and public dancing.
This is not an epistemological argument. This is a basic legal, equality before the law issue with profound consequences for those whose tastes in intoxicants run counter to drugs that are socially sanctioned.
Well, penicillin itself may not be addictive, but I’ve had some cheeses with a live penicillin rind that could, I think, be addictive, but they were a little too stinky for me to find out.
I don’t think, ET, that just because something can be addictive it should a priori be prohibited. I enjoy many addictive things, indeed, by some standards, I am addicted to some things. I don’t see this as a problem, as long as I don’t mismanage the situation; as the long as my “addiction” isn’t of the sort that overwhelms my judgment. Controlling myself does not mean that there are no dangerous or euphoric signals in my systems, it means that I tune and damp them appropriately.
I don’t see this as an epistemological problem, I see it as axiological. It is to me, as I see it, a matter of my aesthetics and our ethics. As I said, to me this a matter of pragmatism. I think people should be able to do just about whatever they aesthetically want, as long as they don’t unethically bother other people. It’s like Henny Youngman’s grandmother, she was over eighty years old and still didn’t need glasses — she drank straight from the bottle.
I should note that in my opinion there’s no need to overlook my argumentative tactics, ET, because I’m not arguing. I’m just thinking out loud about some of my ideas on this matter. I’m not in a Drug Policy 301 seminar, I’m just a commenter at SDA. My style is not designed to prove me correct, it’s designed to make people think twice.
It is all well and good to drag out Watt’s work, but if one pushes the network side of the model to the extent of ignoring its nodes, then one is guilty of the age old oppression of Kings that considers me to be just a cog in the wheel. I am not a cog — I am Vitruvius.
Tho the topic was not the wisdom or idiocy of prohibition, Vitruvius has it right, I feel (and have felt for years).
Prohibition doesn’t work, hasn’t ever worked, will never work, can’t be made to work. And even if it could be made to work in terms of producing certain desirable outcomes it would still be immoral, plain and simple. No one has the right to control what I do with my own body, period.
As to the argument that the state is on the hook for costs, that’s a canard. The anti-tobacco lobby used that argument to confiscate the property of tobacco companies selling a legal highly taxed product. But as tobacco like drugs is personally destructive, there’s a far higher likelihood that all in, on balance, the state SAVES money via shorter life spans.
maryjane has a point too. Freedom is freedom and there is a definite disconnect between our soldiers fighting and dying over there to preserve our freedomss if we so readily give these up to the busybodies.
And BTW, is anything dumber than destroying the main cash crop (poppies) of Afghani farmers who are therefore made more susceptible to recruitment by the Taliban.
Johnson’s War on Poverty increased poverty. The booze prohibition increased violent crime and corruption. The War on Drugs creates millions of victimless “criminals” most black and of the lower socioeconomic order who thereby become much more prone to further crime and even recruitment into radical Islam.
Prohibition increases criminality.
“she was over eighty years old and still didn’t need glasses — she drank straight from the bottle.”
Thanks for that. It’s a good discussion with impressive posts on both sides, but there’s always a place for Henny.
Vitruvius has made some of the best points so I won’t repeat them. Where I would disagree with Vitruvius is which drugs should be banned. The only one I can think of now is MPTP. This is similar in structure to meperidine and was sold in the 1980’s as synthetic meperidine. It has the unfortunate side effect that 90+% of people who try it a few times develop a rapidly progressive form of Parkinson’s. Interestingly, it was freely available in the early 1980’s as a photographic developer. This is the only drug that I would have no hesitation in labelling as dangerous.
PCP is a garbage drug and anyone who values rational thought usually stays far away from PCP. However, PCP is a valuable anesthetic and some people are quite fond of the stuff. Ketamine is quite similar to PCP and freely available. One can get stoned on ketamine, but it is a valuable adjunct in pain management when it is used in small doses as a nasal spray to augment opiate effects in chronic pain. Most recently, ketamine has been found to have the rather unique action of being able to alleviate severe depression in about an hour after being given by iv infusion. This effect lasts about a week and is as good as ECT. It’s made me take another look at this whole family of drugs that I once, like Vitruvius, consigned to the garbage bin. One similar drug that is freely available is dextromethorphan (DXM) which is a cough suppressant. Taking a few hundred mg of DXM gives a stone which is very PCP-like but has it’s own unique psychedelic features. Curious how we hear nothing about DXM use. This is not a new phenomenon and when I was in high school people used to eat large quantities of DXM tablets to get high (this was 35 years ago). It still seems to have a widespread cult following as googling DXM will show.
What has not entered into this discussion at all is the biochemical individuality that makes some people find drugs pleasurable and the “dangers” of drugs that are inferred from effects which may have nothing to do with the drug at all. People who have bipolar disorder are drawn to stimulants and this is one of the things I look for when taking a psychiatric history. Some of the bizarre and violent behavior that methamphetamine is said to cause is likely more related to the underlying neurobiology of a potential amphetamine user than the drug itself. No-one would be stupid enough to use a skid row drunk as an example of the dangers of alcohol as it pertains to 90%% of drinkers, but this is precisely the approach that is being taken to currently illegal drugs. The vast majority of people who use recreational drugs do so responsibly. And, while it should be obvious, but bears mentioning again, dose is crucial. EVERYTHING is poisonous in a high enough dose and pointing to a moron who used 100 times or more the usual dose of a drug as an example of “dangers” of a drug is ludicrous. By this logic we should all stop drinking water as there was recently a highly publicized water overdose death in California.
As far as addictive drugs, SSRI antidepressants are particularly bad for being addictive. Another phenomenon that gets very little attention. I have had an easier time in getting people off high doses of opiates than getting some patients off SSRI’s as they can have weeks of horrendous withdrawal symptoms. A significant number of people have elected to remain on these drugs to avoid the withdrawal symptoms. Again, very individual in that some people have absolutely no problem starting and stopping this class of drugs just as most people can use opiates for an injury and then stop them once they no longer have pain.
“The process starts with “binge parties” which will go on for a whole weekend. Initially, alcohol may be the only substance involved. Marijuana, because it is…”
Gunney 99; the police at the seminar you attended proved my point, alcohol is the gateway drug, and it is the best one, because it lowers inhibitions, whereas marijuana used by a novice, is likely to inspire paranoia, even nausea.
Funny, the police describe a tactic used by drug sellers, that are also used by “Time-share” condominium salesmen. The only difference is the condo salesmen are a lot more aggressive.
My Vote goes with both Vitruvius & Me No Dhimmi’s able presentations.
From my view of the issue prohibition has only become a keystone cops comedy, without the humor . Surly our resources can go into investigating the source of trouble not its symptoms by amplification of the tentacles of organized crime?
We should have learned from Canada’s three year trial with an alcohol ban. Not to mention the States for 13 years.
It only makes the Criminal element rich with power, than gangs to run their drugs. It erodes civil liberties by making the money gained illegally, a part of the police budget. Confiscatory powers are a vital issue. Judges are bribed, pilots, users, & many lives ruined because of jail time. Plus deaths threw unregulated overdoses. No tax money except to thugs. Who create an arena of misery to keep the addicts to do there bidding by prostitution, theft & other heinous acts for a high.
Drugs have always been with us & always will. So will people who cannot control their cravings. Before the 20th century heroin was considered a miracle drug. Opium was considered a gentleman’s form of relaxation. There is so much lies about addiction (it takes a year for heroin for instance) with scare stories attached .All well Intended (we know where they leds to ultimately) to frighten others from use is now a joke. Any credibility by adults has become forfeit with the spread of all this misinformation. The boy cried wolf factor kicks in.
Drug lords & show busts will never stop it, unless it s regulated or there is a inclusive death penalty for any found, for any purpose. Those that ignore Government conventions should be dealt with by the harshest means if made legal anyway. They sure do counterfeiters or stock market scams. Let alone tax evaders. As they should of course.
Spend the money from taxes on said drugs, to root out & find cures, or the reasons for people having no control to not use them.
Billions spent a year by law enforcement, for little gain , billions made by monsters. Thousands fined & imprisoned in jails that should house violent or other delinquents. Parts of whole governments bribed or suborned. This whole thing is a con. From both sides of the rule of law for different agendas.
By the way. I am not for drugs or there use, but this approach has made it worse with no results. Time for a new plan. Maybe several different ones or some in concert.
As for the reason I would entertain it regulated by a government body, is not because I love decrees. Its just their the biggest gang on the block to herd the more evil others out. While also, we have influence with them threw the vote.
Not so with the drug lords.
Just my opinion.
Personally I think it is a lot more sinister. Pot is directly linked to Coke in as much as it is traded for Cocaine.
It has always been a mystery to me how such vast amounts of the stuff can just arrive. Somebody is being paid off. Crack destroys lives.
Young lives that haven’t done any living yet. Whatever your feelings on Pot it is a illegal substance that is every bit a drug like Cocaine.
How this guy walked away with 18 months please don’t be so naive. Money talks.
This is not an intellectual discussion just walk out your door and go a mile in any direction you will probably find a crack house.
Men like this guy will are who run this country and have since Trudeau. Look past your noses at this issue. It runs far deeper and far more insidious than the conversations I have read here would suggest.
There is one proviso I would like to add to my comments above. As you may have noted, I’ve been talking so far solely about adults. When it comes to children, I think that elective adult drugs are inappropriate. I am in favour of having the law smack down adults who peddle such drugs to children. As we’ve been discussing on an adjacent thread, kids must be provided with the space-time to be kids, else they end up maladjusted adults.
That said, it’s been a slice, folks, good night.
“Penicillin, to my knowledge, is not addictive”
ET, neither is pot, habit forming, yes,but not addictive. If I have pot I get high. However, if I have penicillin, I die. Not in ten or twenty or thirty years, but quicker than I can reach for an epipen. Which one of the two needs stricter controls? For me it would be penicillin.
As for pot being a gateway drug, 99.999% of pot is smoked, not consumed or injected. Most people begin by smoking cigarettes. So I would argue that tobacco is the gateway drug and should be illegal.
Having said that, four tons of pot is is not personal, it’s organized production and smuggling , and since it is an illegal drug, then it is organized crime and the rules regarding organized crime should apply. But they should also apply to cigarette smuggling as well.
It is estimated that 25% of all cigarettes sold in Ontario, are sold illegally. And the dealers of illegal cigarettes don’t ask the age of the buyer.
Now please excuse me, all this talk of smoking has produced a craving for a cigarette, I haven’t had one in nine years, but every once in a while I want one, even after nine years.
dmorris: “Gunney 99; the police at the seminar you attended proved my point, alcohol is the gateway drug, and it is the best one, because it lowers inhibitions, whereas marijuana used by a novice, is likely to inspire paranoia, even nausea.”
There are lots of binge parties where drugs never enter into; having experienced many in my younger days. The ones the Police were talking about were a pattern that went on for weeks. They had interviewed the “clients” who were hooked on crystal. The pattern was: alcohol, maryjane, crystal. But you’re right, alcohol was as much a factor as maryjane.
For those who bring up the point that prohibition was a failure, please come on down to Vancouver and spend some time on Hastings from about Main down to Clark, then tell me that lax enforcement, soft sentences and enablement are the answer.
Given the choice I would rather see harsh sentences and strong enforcement.
I agree that drugs, like prostitution are going to be around regardless of the legislation against them. However that does not mean we should simple abandon the fight to make the use of them difficult and with consequence.
A strong stand against illicit drugs, and I’m not talking the namby pamby prentend “war” that Liberals like to cite as failing, will push the users and peddlars underground instead of on our street corners and in our schoolyards. There is a reason our streets are not safe and its not because we treat criminals and drug addict too harshly.
Winston Churchill is often quoted as saying “Democracy is the worst system, except for all the other systems”. He was on to something there, and it also applies to the judges. Electing them couldn’t be worse than the system we have now. Facing the electorate would get rid of the worst of them, which certainly isn’t happening now.
I’m glad CJ’s back on topic: the present day propensity for apparently intelligent adults in positions of authority–judges in this case–to let offenders off the hook.
Our school systems have bought into this big time. In my board, although there are “Safe School” rubrics, it seems they’re rarely used, except to protect serious and serial offenders from appropriate consequences, via the boards’ “mitigating circumstances” clauses, which, I suspect, are used on a regular basis: no school administrator wants a record of suspensions or weapons offences. So, the kids are often let off with a figurative slap on the wrist and the incident shoved under the carpet. (I believe that concerns about Charter challenges have a lot to do with such squeamishness on the part of administrators, though this doesn’t exonerate them.)
I think the idea of electing judges is a good one. Most Canadians have not a clue about our new masters, who now use the Charter to end run democracy. (E.g., How many know that it was Rosalie Abella, now on Canada’s Supreme Court, who discovered the “right” of 14 year olds to engage in sodomy? One of the results is that sexual predators are very partial to Canadian youth and pursue our kids with the full protection of the law. Did such an outcome ever occur to Abella? If we could elect our judges, she might well be on her way out. As it is, we’re stuck with her until she’s 75!)
Our judicial (sic) system’s a mess. Justice rarely seems to occur there. Canadians need to wake up and start challenging the status quo.
jail time for letting your kids get liquored, drive a car, and kill someone ….zero
jail time for selling contraband native smokes to 14 yr olds …..zero
so why is anyone surprised that a pro gangster/scumbag get’s so little time for $15,000,000 worth of pot????
on the other hand, living in the prison capital of Canada you hear these things, the man who murdered my uncle did less time than a man who was convicted of his 4th pot growing conviction….
btw….the contraband smoke problem in Ontario is getting truly out of control….according to my sources(I market to the convenience store industry), it is now closer to 30%, and trending higher….premier mcliar just keeps his head in the sand, and will not do a thing about it….meanwhile, younger and younger kids are getting hooked on this crap…and who are they buying these cigs from?????criminals….same guys selling crack, meth, guns, hookers…you know, the leaders of our community
Jose – The Dutch have NOT legalized pot. It is technically illegal to have and use it but they simply don’t enforce the laws. I spent some time in Amsterdam – mostly in the downtown area. People smoke openly on the street. No one cares. I saw some individuals really strung out but there is no way it was pot. Had to be something much stronger. I’ve seen many more people stoned out their mind on the streets of downtown Vancouver than in Amsterdam.
I’m not for complete legalization of pot in Canada but I am also not in favor of hanging a criminal record on the neck of someone who is caught smoking a joint.
I don’t know about Canada, but in America they have lost the Marijuana War. As long as the US/Mexico Border remains open and the hills of Tennesse stay moist America will have pot to smoke.
IMHO, we should legalize marijuana, place a Local, State and Federal Tax on it to subsidize the Baby-Boomers Social Security.
Works for me.
Let’s see. Life in prison with no chance of parole for 10 years for shooting a known drug dealer who was corrupting the life of your young daughter.
But only 5 years at most for building the bomb that brought down Air India, killing hundreds.
Yep. Must be Canada all right. My what a stellar justice system we have here!
Does it matter if the thug was dealing pot, heroin or tupperware?
If there is a law against it with a penalty, then there is a law against it with a penalty. On top of that, the thug has commited murder and put contracts out on police officers.
The real criminal here is the judge. And he should be held to account.
If indeed the judge is just trying to fit in with a more ‘progressive’ attitude, or gave a lenient sentence out of fear (as some have suggested), then he should not be a public servant, because the public is not being served.
If judges are held accountable for their decisions, then that may prove to be the best motivation for them to uphold the law and not so ‘progressively’ interpret it.
It stikes me that if judges continue to interpret the law so progressively, there will be no law. It will eventually be ruled unconstitutional.
I remember watching an article on the gang of thirteen. They were telling how this gang charge hot dog vendors protection money for doing buisness in their area. “or else”
I suppose this gang would tell you they see nothing wrong with what they are doing either.
Personally, i do see a problem, and if the law won’t stop them then as far as i’m concerned they should have a bulls eye put on them and treated like bonnie and klyde!
To those who don’t think drugs hurt anything, just watch an episode of cops some night and don’t be puffin your pot while watching, you might miss something.
I was almost ran down crossing the steet in yorkton a while back. Car load of kids high on something thats for sure.
And i agree, this judge should be kicked off the bench…he’s a coward!
Kingstonlad, don’t blame the contraband biz on “criminals”. It’s government regulation that creates these criminals. When I was 17, I helped the cigarette smuggling biz get it’s start in the Toronto area. Originally it started as just a way to get cheap smokes for me and my friends. We hated having to try 5 different stores for every one that would actually sell to us, and we hated having to pay such a large portion of our meagre earnings for cigarettes. So originally it was just three of us, jumping in the car, driving out to the reserve, picking up a carton or two each, and driving home. That would last us for a month or so, and then we’d go and repeat the process.
Ofcourse, eventually other people noticed that we were smoking strange cigarettes in unusual packs, and they got curious. So on each trip we’d take an order for an extra person. Only it wouldn’t be fair to get them at-cost, right? The guy should at least pitch for the cost of gas. So he’d end up paying maybe $5-10 more per carton, and soon enough we were making enough money to cover the cost of gas, AND the cost of our own cigarettes. Eventually we were making the trip on a weekly basis just to keep up with demand, and were selling smokes per pack in addition to taking orders for cartons.
Were we criminals? Well….even at that point in my life I would never have considered committing a crime which actually produced victims. I would never have shoplifted, or robbed someone, or committed assault, or anything of the kind. I always remained a productive member of the society, and a decent student. A year later I joined the military and proudly stood in defence of my nation. So no, I don’t consider myself a criminal, merely someone who once broke a law. And if I were in the same position, I’d gladly do it again.
You want to do something about it? Lower the legal age, and keep taxes reasonable. If we could have gotten our cigarettes legally and at a fair price, we would never have started buying them from the Indians, let alone selling them to others.
Too many posters have already made this into a thread about drug legalization. It has nothing to do with it. If you think drugs should be legalized, the forum for that argument is the legislature. Unless and until they are, prosecutors will rightly bring charges for violating the law as it currently stands, and judges will, or are supposed to, apply that law regardless of personal political opinions.
Can anyone explain in a general sense how sentencing works in Canada? I know you have one uniform federal criminal code (as opposed to our 50 state codes plus a federal one), but it sounds like judges have complete discretion in sentencing, which I suppose to me sounds like an insane degree of judicial unaccountability. Perhaps that’s because I’m used to dealing with relative mathematical precision under Florida’s sentencing guidelines, which weight the defendant’s priors as well as the seriousness of the current offense.
Sorry about that, Dave, next time I’m considering posting some comment on some blog I’ll be sure to contact you first to find out whether or not it’s appropriate for me to discuss the topic outside the legislature. I’m sure all those above who mentioned that this was an excellent discussion will be glad to oblige you too.
Vitruvius, I meant the legislature as opposed to the courts, not the legislature as opposed to this blog: I’m sorry if that didn’t come across as clearly as I might have hoped. I’m sure we probably agree more on the substance of the drug debate than you’d expect of me as prosecutor, but regardless of what your or my position might be, does it therefore follow that you believe judges should be lax in applying the law simply because you or they don’t personally agree with it?
Well, I was being a bit snarky there Dave, I apologize.
I do not believe judges should be lax in applying the law. The question is, what was the range of penalties available? If the judge acted within the range, perhaps there are reasons we would understand if we knew the details of the case and the relevant precedents better. Given the quantity and the guy’s record, it does sound suspicious to me, even if it is “just marijuana” as the judge called it, but I’m not an expert.
Meanwhile, by early afternoon yesterday the original discussion here had clearly split a few times, including the “elect judges” sequence and the “what do you mean ‘just marijuana’ — it’s the evil spawn of Satan” sequence, which produced some not entirely to be unexpected counter-arguments, if I understand blog-comment discussions correctly.
I agree that it is annoying when people go wildly off topic in the middle of a discussion, on the other hand, real discussions in forums like this do tend to diverge, and I’m not sure we would be better off if the discussion constratints were too strict. For the last few years, I think Kate has done an excellent job of managing the constraints she does apply to our discussions here, which I think is in part related to SDA’s receiving the 2005 and 2006 Web Log Awards.
I just spent some time checking out your fine blog, Dave, and I see you’ve noticed the situation at Duke. I’ve been following it for a while at durhamwonderland.blogspot.com – now there’s a travesty of justice. Regarding your blog’s Franklin quote, there are a bunch more along those lines sprinkled in my collected aphorisms, available here: tinyurl.com/s4dlp