Madam Speaker, two clear messages are being sent by Bill C-38. One is to our youth that it is okay to smoke marijuana because they will just get slapped with a parking ticket fine. The other one is to the criminal world. There will be a demand for marijuana because the youth will smoke even more marijuana.
The irony is, we spend a billion dollars annually on our drug control program. Supposedly the program's target is to suppress drug supply. Why are we doing all this when on the one hand we are promoting its use and on the other hand we are throwing away a billion dollars and tying up the resources of the police departments across the country?
The police associations across the country do not support the bill. They know it does not work. It is not about drug free; it is about promoting drug use. The government is headed down the wrong path when it comes to the decriminalization of marijuana.