TURMEL: Sudbury Star good and bad
From: John Turmel (bc726_at_FreeNet.Carleton.CA)
Date: 10/31/04
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Date: 31 Oct 2004 13:56:16 GMT
JCT: letters@thesudburystar.com
>Pressure on the courts
>Thursday, October 28, 2004
>The Sudbury Star
>Editorial
>Court system continues to be tied up with unnecessary
marijuana prosecutions
SS: This week in a Sudbury courtroom, a Sudbury-area man was
sentenced to six months of house arrest after he pleaded
guilty to marijuana production. In 2001, 56 marijuana plants
were found growing in and around his home, which the man,
56, and his wife claim were mostly for the medical purposes
of a friend suffering from Hepatitis C and diabetes.
JCT: I guess no one told him the law being declared dead by
the Supreme Court of Canada in Krieger. No one told him
about Turmel. Or he has no friends. Real friends.
SS: While leniency was certainly warranted in this case, as
there should be for cases involving the use of pot on
compassionate grounds, it raises several questions about the
status of marijuana production and possession laws in
Canada, and the way they are prosecuted. This case took
three years to wind its way through the courts, long enough
that the friend for whom the pot was being grown died
awaiting trial in 2003.
JCT: Was the sick friend charged too? And denied the illegal
controlled substance throughout, no doubt.
SS: There have been several fines levied for marijuana
possession in Ontario courts this week. In Pembroke, a man
received a $1,500 fine after pleading guilty to growing 11
marijuana plants outside his home and possession of five
grams of dried marijuana inside the home.
JCT: Because Grant Krieger didn't move to claim his
cultivation win last year. He's responsible for everyone
busted for cultivation since he won and didn't claim the
pot. Until I do. And no one told him about the Krieger case.
Isn't Rick Reimer from Pembroke. He knew about Krieger. He
let the guy fall. Sad.
SS: And in Windsor, a woman charged with growing 103 pot
plants with an estimated street value of $132,000 pleaded
guilty and was placed on two years probation and ordered to
pay $5,750 in penalties.
JCT: I must admit that it offends me when the cops keep
claiming that every clone is worth over $1000. It's so
ridiculous that it tends to bring the administration of
justice into disrepute. True? When you read something like
this, 132 plants in her basement, not the 8-foot high kind
under natural sun but the 8-inch kind under a lamp, don't
you always laugh at your government lying again. Then stop
laughing when you realize what it means that your your
government lies to you.
SS: Each of these cases followed lengthy police
investigations and took more than a year to wind through the
courts before fines were levied. Increasingly, these cases
are unnecessarily choking up our court system. In 2002,
courts across Canada registered 93,000 drug-related
convictions. Seventy-five per cent involved marijuana, and
75 per cent of those were for simple possession. More than
half of the possession convictions led only to fines.
JCT: .75*93000 is 69,750 pot busts. 52,000 possession
convictions while simple possession prohibition was dead in
all of 2002! 52,000 Canadians who don't yet know they were
wrongly convicted by the Attorney General because CanWest
Global and the media helped them cover it up.
SS: We can only imagine how much police and court time has
been dedicated to the investigation and prosecution of the
possession charges that led to the fines, but it's hard to
imagine it was worth it all.
To be sure, no one wants to encourage marijuana use _ it is,
after all, a carcinogen
JCT: Har har har har. How behind the times, how uninformed,
can they be? There have appeared in just the last year a
spate of reports concluding that marijuana contains anti-
carcinogens. This would explain why smokers of only
marijuana don't get lung cancer like smokers of tobacco and
non-smokers do. Think about it. Since smokers get lung
cancer and non-smokers get lung cancer but marijuana smokers
don't get lung cancer, one can only conclude... Is this
really that hard?
SS: _ but it's becoming increasingly obvious that
authorities cannot discourage marijuana use through
prosecution of either its possession or production.
A year ago, the federal government recognized this and
promised to reform the laws that restrict marijuana use.
JCT: And these reporters bought the government's lie too,
hook, line, and sinker.
SS: Last winter, Parliament debated legislation that would
decriminalize possession of marijuana under 15 grams _
enough for 15 to 20 joints. It would have meant anyone found
in possession of that amount would be handed a ticket and a
fine that could be paid like a speeding ticket _ without
tying up court time.
JCT: So in the final analysis, everyone is still chased by
the cops and with the doubled penalties on production and
other activities, the net result will be greater restriction
on marijuana use than before, not a reform of it. The
government almost always is doing the opposite of what it is
saying.
SS: Unfortunately, those plans went no where, and with Prime
Minister Paul Martin, who promised to bring this issue to a
resolution, now leading a precarious minority government,
it's unlikely to be dealt with until after the next general
election at the earliest.
JCT: For those of us who know the law remains repealed no
matter if some senile court thinks they got elected to be
judges and pass new laws, that's good news. No new real law
is really good news. The danger is that they pass the real
new law under the guise of reform. But that's not that
likely being that most members of Parliament have been kept
up to date by me no matter how CanWest Global and the
Attorney General have fooled Canadians. Everyone admits they
had to drop the charges still pending against those charged
while the law was dead. As for those just convicted, shshsh,
we won't tell them and the media won't tell them either.
SS: In the meantime, recreational marijuana use is
commonplace in Canadian society, across many age groups. A
1996 Senate review on marijuana laws concluded _ it thought
conservatively _ that as many as three million Canadians
were recreational tokers. The goal of those who would reform
the pot laws is to ensure that those three million Canadians
never see the inside of a courtroom. It's still a goal worth
aiming for.
JCT: And changing penalties from jail to fines so they can
keep cops chasing Canadians isn't the way to go. Sure, the
cop shops want someone to chase but that's not a good enough
reason by itself. The police spokespersons' claims to
concern for our health as the reason for their activism to
keep the game of cops and farmers alive falls flat.
SS:What do you think? Send us your opinion in a Letter to
the Editor at 33 MacKenzie St., Sudbury, P3C 4Y1, or fax it
to 674-6834 or email it to letters@thesudburystar.com
JCT: The whole real story is at
http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/timeline.htm and is being
brought to the attention of the Supreme Court of Canada so
you may as well get caught up.
-- Abolitionist Slave Leader John C."The Banking Systems Engineer" Turmel for UNILETS interest-free time-based currency in U.N. resolution C6 to Governments in the http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration.htm http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel 519-753-0645 USENET: can.politics
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