I am not mister; I'm just Robin.
Thank you, Chief Justice.
Our position in respect of Bill C-15 and drug prohibition in general is quite simple.
Societies such as yours or ours govern their members by the content of those members. Drug crime is not really crime at all in any necessary sense. It is quasi-crime or crime mala prohibita on a par with an act forbidding the importation of wool and not at all on a par with, for example, that divine precept forbidding murder. I would also like to add that slavery of persons is another thing that I put in much worse regard than the possession of drugs or what not, to refer to Ms. Miller's comment.
But in any case, the rhetoric about drugs singularly destroying lives is fundamentally offensive. There is a wide variety of non-destructive reasons for drug use. Many human beings use drugs because they improve their happiness or quality of life. Other human beings use drugs for production of heightened spiritual, esthetic, and interpersonal experience.
In a commentary on DOB from the book PiHKAL by Dr. Alexander Shulgin, one of the amphetamines to be rescheduled--that's DOB, for example--in a three-milligram dose the experience was described thusly:
“Wunnerful. It's been one heck of a good experiment, and I can't understand why we waited nine years to try this gorgeous stuff. Without going into the cosmic and delicious details, let's just say it's a great material and a good level.”
Why should such a thing be prohibitorially scheduled at all? Everyone has personal tastes. Some run toward automobiles, and automobile users are taken care of by regulation, and there is no reason your society should not, at worst, apply some sort of gradated licensing to drug purchase and dispensation involving training as to the calculated statistical risk involved with drug use. At best, your society would leave each to his own diet and not use blunt corporate policy instruments for dietary control.
Further, repeal of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act will redirect a revenue stream that currently pumps into organized crime. The stream will be diverted by the CDSA's repeal into legitimate, regulated companies subject to human rights law and all the other furnishings of a modern place of employment. Those legitimate companies will use law courts for dispute resolution, not guns.
Repeal of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act will remove a key revenue stream from organized crime. Continuation of the act will sustain a key revenue stream for organized crime.
Harmless men and women do not need to submit to being governed by those who seek to harm them by imprisonment. If membership in a society becomes injurious to happiness, men and women may leave that society and they may form their own society capable of its own legislative acts. Of course, they cannot legislate away gravity, nor may they depart from certain customary behaviours. However, these have little to do with possessing or not possessing any specific plants or substances.
Why should any reasonable marijuana smoker consent to being governed by a society that sustains the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act? Why should he not instead consent to government by a society that respects his peaceful transaction with his chosen supplier? If your society fails to take up the duty of regulating demand-oriented drug suppliers, should some society or societies not fill that void?
We will quote from our summary of Bill C-15, in short, just to include one part that we think is rather important. It highlights the lack of care that has gone into the drafting of Bill C-15.
As to the appending of amphetamine and its analogs to schedule 1 of the act, we wonder why you've included the brominated and chlorinated variance of 2,5 dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetamine, yet have excluded the diogenated analog 2,5 dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine. This gives us cause to question what principles were involved in the drafting of the proposed appendix to schedule 1.
To conclude our statement, prohibition is a failed corporate policy and it causes harm to members of your Canadian society. The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act is the instrument that carves out the market enjoyed by organized crime in respect of drugs. Repeal of that act would also give the benefit of freeing up your scarce judicial resources. Absent repeal, we declare that men and women may constitute their own governments respectful of their right and good custom and be done with you, and that would be a shame, for Canada is a decent idea. It is not, however, a mandatory idea.