[The marijuana industry is worth tens of billions of dollars in Canada, and as much as $7 billion a year in B.C. And Boyd says some growers will go to extremes to protect their operations.
“You have young men with knives or guns or baseball bats guarding these plantations that are worth literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are in an Al Capone-style prohibition,” he {sfu criminologist neil boyd} says.](http://vancouver.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=bc_rcmp-boyd20050303)
a horrible tragedy that should have never happened. five people dead, four of them rookie mounties, and for what?
marijauna grow-ops are in the hands of criminals and thugs because the plant is illegal.
if legal this plant could be easily and cheaply produced by individuals in small quantities for personal use, posing no danger to anybody.
it could be easily and cheaply produced on large scales by legitimate farmers with adequate regulation for industrial use, posing no danger to anybody.
but no, it remains a criminal substance, controlled by criminals. and that is the fault of the prohibitionists.
busting marijuana gow-ops has become a lucrative business for the cops, and one they have become increasingly aggressive in pursuing. this has forced the growing of weed out of the hands of smaller, local mom&pop type operations and into the hands of organized crime, biker gangs, and those willing to heavily arm themselves against police attack.
over a harmless fucking plant.
yes, the bad guys would be doing other bad things if they couldn’t make their profits from pot, but the truth is, they already are doing those things. the illegal cultivation of marijuana is worth billions upon billions of dollars, it is easily one of the top cash crops in this country alone, and the sooner that money is out of the hands of organized crime, the better.
i would go so far as to suggest that the removal of those tens of billions of dollars per year from criminal hands would collapse a significant portion of organized crime in this country virtually overnight.
but no. the cops get to keep the cash they find on busts, they get to sell the assets seized in busts and keep that revenue - shit the cops are making out almost as good under this prohibition as the gangs they are fighting, and people – in this case four mounties – are dying over it. not to mention the risks of fire, explosions and ruined neighbourhoods (sinking property values in known grow areas) from unsafe, illegal grow-ops.
over a harmless fucking plant.
and i’m not even touching the rumours of poorly-trained rookie cops, without proper backup, executing a shaky and hastily-ordered search warrant on a known-to-be-dangerous individual. i am waiting for confirmation of those rumours before i comment further on them.
Bolding mine. So the police bust a guy growing marijuana, they and he end up dead, and the public is supposed to suddenly decide that marijuana is evil? Seems to me that all five of them were killed by guns, not drugs. Or by people with guns, if you prefer. But the act of growing marijuana is what’s dangerous? :dubious:
Although I have no reason to believe that cops get to keep any money found on a site, etc. It does sound like something they would do.
anyways, I would like to also add:
I am especially annoyed when users of pot are…‘harrassed’ by the police while not attacking the source directly.* (While keeping the idea of, ‘pot is illegal so it is bad’ to give them motivation) Attacking the source directly? It could likely mean death by some derranged loon as we have learned, even in Canada shit can happen.
*To attack the source directly requires Bravery, Courage, Pride and a feeling of an honourable duty to do what is right, and possibly putting ones own life on the line.
Busting kids/teens/random users requires a pompus arrogant attitude, rudeness, No pride and certainly Nothing better to do other than to stir up trouble and to show who is boss, and have a good story about some “pot smoking punks” to share with the fellow officers.
I feel like cops in the Edmonton area have quotas to meet.
If it’s anything like the United States it isn’t the individual officers making the bust keeping the money for themselves. What happens is the department might be able to take the cash, and in some cases assets, seized and use them to supplement their funding. Whenever I see a Camero or a Mustang in police colors with D.A.R.E. painted on the side I wonder if those were seized assets.
Anyway, to my Canadian pals, be careful. You might be headed towards dangerous territory when it comes to the war on drugs. We’ve handled it very poorly over the past 70+ years and I would hate to see you guys make the same mistakes. I say be careful because apparantly you guys are learning how to fight the war on drugs from United States law enforcement.
Marc
Is it just little old paranoid me, or does anybody else think (and I so hope I am wrong) that the rookies might have been set up by their own organization? Not to get killed, but to get involved in some violence. That would gice the Govt. “justification” to crack down harder. Watch the news carefully, Canadians. You may be in more danger than you think. Bush-itis can infect even the healthiest of societies.
Everyone just cool your jets. I’m as much for drug legalization as the next guy, but this tragedy has sweet fuck all to do with drug prohibition. Yes, I know, all the headlines read “Four mounties slain in grow op raid”, but that’s very misleading. It leads a person to believe that the cops were tipped off to the presence of a grow op, and were killed when they went to check it out. This is not at all what happened. “Four mounties slain in chop shop raid” would be more accurate, though not perfect. The mounties initially went onto the property after stolen property, described today in the Globe and Mail as “several brand new trucks in pieces”, and while there discovered some marijuana. The guy in question was renowned in the area for his violent temper and lifelong hatred of authority, and the cops were apparently aware of this. Why they failed to take adequate precautions is a question I’m sure the inevitable inquiry will look at closely. But blaming this on drug prohibition is just stupid.
Sure, but the standard to determine an unjust law has to be higher than "it’s keeping me from doing something I want to. A law making marijuana use illegal isn’t unjust on it’s face. It’s probably a bad law. It’s probably stupid, unenforceable and pointless, but a law can be illconceived without violating someone’s fundamental rights. If you think the law is bad, work to change it…both the US and Canada are democratic states where people can mobilize to get laws changed. Just don’t think you’re Gandhi because you smoke pot.
It’s not the fact that marijuana is illegal that is an abbrogation of people’s rights. It is the ways that the laws against marijuana are enforced that does that.
this is more the kind of sentiment i’m reacting to, and i should have linked to this or a similar story off the top. i blame having too many windows open, and not rechecking my op links to be sure they had all i was aiming for on preview.
the prohibitionists are using this to try and set back the path to decrim & legalization, and they are wrong. the cops are using this event to put fear into the public, and distract them from the police’s own failings. it doesn’t even really matter that they weren’t there to investigate a grow op in the first place – everybody believes they were because that’s all the cops & prohibitionists in this country are talking about right now. fuckers.
Captain Amazing, I think you misunderstood my statement, “Some laws are unjust.” I didn’t say this with the intention that ALL laws are ok to break just because it’s keeping you from doing what you want to do. I’m just saying that there are some laws in this country that are keeping regular citizens down for no reason other then financial gain for our own Government. And that just isn’t right. And I understand that people can mobilize to change the laws, but not everyone has the time to do so. Their priorities are their jobs, their families, survival in general, etc… This is still no reason to say “the law is the law until it’s changed and that’s that”. I do however realize that this is how it is in this country.
Hopefully, you’re talking about laws in general, because marijuana prohibition goes beyond “it’s keeping me from doing something I want to”. Many of the points on this issue have already been made in the GD forum.
I don’t know one person who indulges that thinks this about themselves at all. Do you really think people like to break this law?
It’s generally, “I like doing it, and it’s not hurting anyone if I do it”.
I’m sure most of the people who smoke pot don’t like to break the law. They do, however, and they don’t have to. Smoking pot isn’t neccesary to life, and, in general (I’m excepting people who use it for medical reasons), doesn’t provide benefits other than the euphoria that comes from intoxication. They’re free to stop.
I don’t know, maybe it’s me. I just have trouble understanding why somebody would knowingly disobey a law, unless the law was so incredibly wicked that obeying it would be a great moral evil. Pot laws just don’t pass that test for me.
I’m not sure what your saying here. Are you saying that violating the law is an immoral act regardless of the law being violated? Or are you saying that the risk of getting caught outweighs the potential benefits of violating any particular law?
There are more reasons, but I don’t see the flaw in this one though.
This is part of the problem too. Why is being in a euphoric, peaceful state a bad thing? Should homosexuals not have the right to have sex in their own privacy? After all, it isn’t necessary for life, and doesn’t provide benefits other than pleasure… (Not my opinion. I’m sure there are plenty of other benefits too ) I just don’t understand why there are groups of people in the world who want to prevent others from feeling good when the actions really hurt no one.
Are you saying that every current law should be obeyed regardless?
) I just don’t understand why there are groups of people in the world who want to prevent others from feeling good when the actions really hurt no one.