[mojo_mattv]

mojo_mattv's complaint is borne out by the argument made here, which revolves around weed's supposed aid to the creative process and around exaggerating its relative safety vs legal drugs.

If we were dealing with grown-ups in the legalization movement, rather than clones of Marc Emery, we'd be talking about how prohibition of a popular drug serves primarily to fund organized crime, which in turn promotes arguably more serious social ills, such as the spread of hard drugs, prostitution, etc. Prohibition is a boon to criminal enterprise.

This is the reason to legalize and decriminalize drugs. It's time to treat drug abuse as a public health problem, not a crime.

Very enlightening Skippy, like I said, I'm not against marijauna use I'm just saying that in order to make a successful attempt at decriminalization one must make the change through legislation rather than getting stoned in a big group holding signs saying "legalize it!"

But those crowds are such a tiny fragment of the Cannabis community. Millions of Canadians have used / are using Cannabis. Why keep zeroing in on those protesters as the sole manifestation of the pro-decriminalization/pro-legalization movement ? The issue goes beyond the small crowds of peaceful public inhalers, and their communal antics. Currently, the US is warehousing 1000's upon 1000's of those types of non-violent folks in their prison industry. Do we really want to round them up and pursue such rabid intolerance ?

Sometimes there HAS to be some sort of speaking out, in public, or in print. To just sit passively by while Harper & Dion slide bill C-26 into law means potential serious jail time for those relatively small crowds, and the hundreds of thousands of Canadians those crowds symbolize.

The legislative changes you refer to will not happen unless more NDP and Green Party members are elected to parliament, or unless the Liberal and Conservative MP's change their ideologies (which is unlikely).

Verbally chastizing the justified demonstrators only facilitates bill C-26, so please, try to see the larger issue, and the hundreds of thousands of Canadians NOT at those rallies.

People can come up with statistics to help prove any argument, 96% of people know that.
The primary reason for me and many other people "zeroing in on these protestors" is simply because they happen to be the most visible, and as skippy said, they usually do more bad then good. I'm not so naiive as to assume that these are the only people recreationally enjoying marijuana, however; my point stands that as far as I know that majority of people who do smoke are not actively campaigning for legislative change. Rather it is a disproportionate ammount of "stoners" getting together and protesting in these rallies, and by doing this, drowning out the smaller, quieter groups actively campaigning through legislation.