Thursday, June 30, 2011

Am I stupid or is the Justice System?


This is really frustrating for me. I have just come back from my Bail officer. I came. I signed. I have reported and received a letter requesting my attendance at the Forensic Psychiatric Services office. I need to attend on the 11th and on the 15th July see someone else in the office. This is a court ordered thing. They have to see whether I am a threat to society, a real criminal, insane perhaps for wanting justice?

Just let me review my activities since I ran for City council:
Monday, September 8, 2008
Cannabis sales in Vancouver, today!
or even the first post on this blog
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
On the BC Almanac radio show today


Since this is my journal of my thoughts and activities it is not even clear that I had Mens Rea or a guilty mind

Or even here where I appeared on this issue and was recognized by the parliament of Canada, my words forever part of Canadian history. Chief Justice Bud the Oracle from the Unincorporated Deuteronomical Society.

I don't know what shysters got to be entrenched in our justice system but there seems to be a full compliment of them. If I am your common run of the mill drug dealer then I don't understand why they haven't caught every last one of them? I mean the friggren gall of the Crown Prosecutor to make me out as a drug dealer when at every step I claimed that I was doing this for the safety of my community. Why a lawyer trained in the law (like a circus seal?) can't get that across I would not know. I have had a public record available to be perused by any and all since August 2008. It's not that I was shy and reluctant to write anything either.


The other thing is the obvious disconnect that a judge must have from reality to forget the disproportionate treatment of two equally behaving, law abiding citizens of Canada according to which substance they might choose to achieve their favorite altered state.

If a person is doing nothing different than another, what they may have ingested, or even carry on their person should not be a consideration for different treatment. If what possession is being carried by another is of no direct threat to anyone else than the government has no right to have a say about anything. Criminal law governs only human action against other humans or their property. If someone is misusing or abusing something someone then criminal law can be applied. But then conversely someone who is not misusing or abusing anything or anyone should also be treated differently: not like a criminal.

The above are principles in law. The treatment of similar circumstances alike and the treatment of unalike differently page 112 RAILWAY EXPRESS AGENCY, INC. V. NEW YORK, 336 U. S. 106 (1949)
Invocation of the equal protection clause, on the other hand, does not disable any governmental body from dealing with the subject at hand. It merely means that the prohibition or regulation must have a broader impact. I regard it as a salutary doctrine that cities, states and the Federal Government must exercise their powers so as not to discriminate between their inhabitants except upon some reasonable differentiation fairly related to the object of regulation. This equality is not merely abstract justice. The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority must be imposed generally. Conversely, nothing opens the door to arbitrary action so effectively as to allow those officials to pick and choose only a few to whom they will apply legislation, and thus to escape the political retribution that might be visited upon them if larger numbers were affected.


The learned Judge Rideout mentioned that he thought this citation was too old. That brings to mind other old but valid quotes
Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School has cautioned:
"In a society whose ‘whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s own minds,’ the governing institutions, and especially the courts, must not only reject direct attempts to exercise forbidden domination over mental processes; they must strictly examine as well oblique intrusions likely to produce or designed to produce, the same result."
--L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law Sec. 15-5, at p. 889 (1978) (quoting Stanley v. Georgia (1969)
394 U.S. 557, 565.)


"...cognitive liberty must guarantee freedom from – the right not to have your brain monitored or directly manipulatedwithout your informed consent. Seventy-five years ago, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned that scientific advances might someday “bring means of exploring unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions."
Olmstead v. United States (1928) 277 U.S. 438, 474

“ freedom of thought … is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. With rare aberrations a pervasive recognition of that truth can be traced in our history, political and legal.”
- Justice Benjamin Cardozo, Supreme court justice


"…without freedom of thought there can be no free society. "
- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter


And of course this one is an old quote which is also very much valid today, IMO
Thoughts are free and are subject to no rule.

— Paracelsus-

So what has got me thinking today? I am confused over why it is that a man or woman can come in to the liquor store to buy a bottle of what amounts to poison which is subject to no warning labels as to causing harm during pregnancy like FAS, perhaps some warning about personality changes, and lethal dangers if taken with other drugs. Nothing Nada! Considering that in a twenty six ounce bottle drank in one sitting there is enough to kill half of those who might be foolish enough to try it. Alcohol can be purchased twice or more times a day and drank responsibly even consumed at a high rate of 2 to 3 ounces per hour and this person's health care coverage is fully intact as long as they cause no one else harm by driving or even riding their bike drunk. If this person walks to the liquor store, walks home, they are not a criminal or a citizen without rights. Where as someone who chooses to be less inebriated with marijuana can not be so peacefully without being a criminal and or committing a criminal act supporting illegal drug dealing. Why the double standard here? Is this not enforcement of a cultural preference as if it was a monopoly. If it had something to do with being about public safety or health concerns then one must ask why Alcohol and Tobacco are not treated the same.

This drunk person could be mean and reclusive, dark and vengeful without ever being criminal. They could hate their neighbors, be unfriendly, laugh inappropriately, and make rude remarks without crossing the criminal law line.

This drunken person will likely become a healthcare risk and finally a recipient of expensive health care treatment. Nothing could be done about it when this person was abusing a dangerous but 'legal' substance, or two. Alcohol and tobacco. The most dangerous to the user as well as the others, healthcare costly drugs, are exempted from having to comply with restrictions and regulations concerning all dangerous substances. The fact that they are exempt from the Drugs and Substances Act is telling of two things: Like circumstances are not being treated alike as they should be under law. It should not make any difference what substance one chooses to ingest. The only difference is if the resultant action were different. If for instance, a crime were committed after alcohol was ingested, to be in a state of intoxication would be of no consequence to the outcome of guilt or innocence and therefore a crime would have taken place. Also the converse is true, if I am not committing any crime or in any way threatening any one else, then my behavior should not be criminal in any way. What I have ingested, has no bearing on anything. Especially when the only detrimental impact is due to the law which has been created to be neutral in its application, ostensibly for public health concerns, yet leaves out the most dangerous to the user and society drugs: Tobacco and alcohol.

You can't have equal treatment under the application of law if you exempt the users of the most dangerous drugs from the same law which protects others from other dangerous substances with severe criminal penalties. And you shouldn't be able to say 'well they are controlled under two different laws and therefore it is acceptable to be harsh toward the users of some substances and not others.'

The minister is not doing his duty to protect the many users of these two 'legal' drugs. As I have stated before, his duty is to control and regulate in accordance with the risks posed. This is to protect the individual and the public. This is an on going duty. The minister according to his duties outlined in section 55 must act and bring before parliament any concerns that fall under the act. The Act was never meant to be an instrument of prohibition. Simply making something illegal to possess is not something that can be lawfully done under the criminal code. Property laws apply to anything to do with things or substances. Criminal law is supposed to pertain to the actions of people against other people or their property.

By bringing the alcohol industry into the safety net of the CDSA it can be made to comply to labeling laws stating the dangers of misuse in a concise way and recommended limits of so much per person per day might be considered. The same could be done with other substances according to their potential dangers to the users and the community.

Anything else is not mandated by the CDSA. The CDSA was never meant to be an instrument that would arbitrarily target small group of users of substances for moral reasons and make them into criminals for their safe use of something no more dangerous than other substances for which no criminal penalties were given, like tobacco and alcohol.