What I said as Chief Justice Bud the Oracle from the Unincorporated Deuteronomical Society to the Peoples of Canada foreshadows Proposition 19 and the adjustment of Justice necessary to garner the change we need.
Publications - April 30, 2009
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MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS
Meeting No. 17
Thursday, April 30, 2009
The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights met at 8:40 a.m. this day, in the ARBUTUS Room, Four Seasons Hotel, Vancouver, British Columbia, the Chair, Ed Fast, presiding.
Members of the Committee present: Joe Comartin, Hon. Ujjal Dosanjh, Ed Fast, Hon. Dominic LeBlanc, Réal Ménard, Rob Moore, Brian Murphy and Brent Rathgeber.
Associate Members present: Dona Cadman, Nina Grewal, Andrew Saxton, John Weston and Alice Wong.
In attendance: Library of Parliament: Dominique Valiquet, Analyst.
Witnesses: As individuals: Neil Boyd, Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University; Robert M. Gordon, Professor and Director, School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University. Vancouver Police Department: Brad Desmarais, Inspector in Charge, Gangs and Drugs Section; Bob Stewart, Inspector in Charge, Criminal Intelligence Section. Royal Canadian Mounted Police: A/Commr Al Macintyre, Officer in Charge of Criminal Operations, Province of British Columbia; Supt Doug Kiloh, Chief Officer, Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit; C/Supt Fraser MacRae, Officer in Charge, Surrey Detachment; Insp Gary Shinkaruk, Officer in Charge, Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Enforcement; Sgt Roland Wallis, Court Certified Drug Expert and Clandestine Lab Instructor, General Duty Police Officer and Senior Patrol Non-Commissioned Officer. As an individual: Matt Logan, Retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police Operational Psychologist, Behavioural Science Group in Major Crime. Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity (REED): Michelle Miller, Executive Director. Vancouver Citizens Against Crime: Wai Young, Coordinator. S.U.C.C.E.S.S.: Evelyn Humphreys, Project Manager, A Chance to Choose. Unincorporated Deuteronomical Society: Bud the Oracle, Chief Justice; Robin Wroe, Registrar.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the Committee on Monday, February 9, 2009, the Committee resumed its study on the State of Organized Crime.
The witnesses made statements and answered questions.
We said this:
Mr. Bud the Oracle (As an Individual):
Mr. Chairman, I am Bud the Oracle, chief justice from the Unincorporated Deuteronomical Society.
Peace to this hotel and to the House of Commons justice and human rights committee.
In summary, our society's judgment is that prohibition and your Controlled Drugs and Substances Act are failed policies that trespasses upon the peaceful possessory right that ought to be enjoyed by everyone. Your society's policy does not respect this right. You violently oppress otherwise law-abiding members of your own society. Your corporation's own policy is the organized crime.
In respect of drugs, your government's own policy is what enables the black market to flourish. Absent your corporate policy, regulated companies would supply drugs on a demand-oriented basis, similar to any other product. Your policy has alienated and will continue to alienate men and women from your society and its government.
To flesh out our view, I now turn the proceedings over to the registrar, Mr. Robin Wroe.
Mr. Robin Wroe (Registrar, Unincorporated Deuteronomical Society):
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.
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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.
Unlike in the State of California, OUR PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT SEEMS RELUCTANT TO BE AN INSTRUMENT OF THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE even when a lawful petition is submitted, while the federal Government has made no concessions to democracy since Harper took office.
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