The frustration of being shunned by those who are supposed to be there to protect you is only slightly less painful than being misunderstood and discredited by your fellows. People have been fed endless reams of propaganda about the use of substances and drug laws, over generations, to the point that this subject has developed into something untouchable. Although lawyers claim to be looking out for your interests they are cowed by their own misunderstandings that the way things are and have been is how they will always be. The insecurity of so called legal experts to seek justice where few brave souls have trodden is the same human enigma which hinders any kind of change. Human rights from racial, religious equality, women's rights especially abortions, gay rights to very recently gay marriage have all been a long time coming. One thing in common was that even those whose best interest lay in change of their own situation had a vast majority of disbelievers and detractors within their ranks until the crucial events were close on the horizon. Even today's leading edge drug activists use the language of prohibition and continue to unthinkingly entrench it by supporting "medical" marijuana initiatives. How dare people think that only doctors can prescribe a plant which has been in common usage for at least three millennium without causing a problem. That is the same status as alcohol had during prohibition: only on a doctor's prescription. This led to a situation where the privileged who had the ability to afford good health care could access their drug of choice. Control for the sake of monopoly has caused great havoc in our communities. Thought control has stripped freedom from a thinking man's psyche and caused government tyranny to pervade so called free societies at the expense of law and order.
Without going into the legal arguments involved in prohibition, either for or against, the whole idea that someone should presume to be able to make you a criminal for something you might ingest, if you harm no one, seems absolutely absurd. If you say that this is for the good of society at large, at least public health, then what excuse would you have not to class alcohol and tobacco in the same league? This is not rational thinking and yet people are harmed directly and indirectly by a law that makes no sense. Nowhere in the prohibitions act does it mandate making substances illegal. This a misinterpretation of the act by the minister. The act itself mandates only control and regulation. In the courtroom the crown prosecutor giggled and rambled on about how my drug dealing disturbed the neighbors surrounding me. Not one person complained to management, yet she gets to spin lies on a presumption that because the law she is enforcing deems my behavior criminal, what I do must be offensive to my neighbors. The truth of it is that the disturbances and wife beatings caused by alcohol had police to the building on almost a daily basis, not my drug dealing.
Humans are encouraged to consume, or participate in, many dangerous activities that have a greater potential to harm others, which at first glance seem innocuous or even crucial to our daily existence. Take the marketing of vehicles and government promotion of oil production, as consumer driven addictions and you will see how private enterprise has developed our reliance on automobiles to the point where we can not perceive of a life without them. Roads and infrastructure are created with tax dollars, all so that individuals can be free to travel anywhere at anytime. The costs of pollution are leading to a global crisis of unsolvable proportions which threaten all of mankind. Health problems are a side effect of lack of exercise and exposure to the elements, as well as noxious gases. Tens of thousands of people are killed directly each year by the careless misuse of automobiles, and yet no one is criminalized for making a mistake, unless impaired, in their normal careless use. There is no reason, except personal addiction to automobiles, why good public transport systems couldn't do better and be much safer at moving the masses around. Cars are a consumer product which people become addicted to, more so than many psychedelic substances, and are a lot more dangerous to humanity, by a huge factor, than all illegal drugs combined. It seems that all is allowable as long as prodigious amounts of resources and human endeavor serve corporations in their unimpeded efforts to enslave us to their products. Continuous growth is encouraged to raise more slaves who can easily be manipulated by marketing into supporting/buying/believing anything. Enlightenment has become the antithesis of consumerism, justice and good government.
The largest fraud I have seen recently was the 911 scam. Those buildings could not have come down by two aircraft. That feat is impossible, seen especially evident in the free fall collapse of building seven. Still, the "threat" of global terrorism is used to front for unprovoked oil wars. Not one shred of evidence has ever linked Osama Bin Laden to 911 in a court of law, only allegations by governments bound on attacking other nations on trumped up lies. Supposedly he could not have been taken to stand trial and his body had to have been dumped at sea. These are the kind of state assassinations/murders which were frowned upon by people who claimed to live under the rule of law in civilized societies only a few decades ago. Mass murderers/war criminals were put on trial in earlier times so that evidence of their crimes could be brought forth to convict them in a courtroom. Today people like George W Bush can start a war based on lies and false unproven allegations and millions of morons will believe every last detail of those lies because they heard their leaders lie to them on TV. They will be incensed to hate anyone without a shred of proof.
Ten minutes after I saw the 911 scam unfold on the campground office TV, I returned to my RV deciding to stay put for another day. While sitting outside peacefully smoking a joint, my neighbor, an American in a forty foot motor home frowned on me for smoking the herb as he lit up a cigarette and proclaimed "it was that bastard Osama Bin Laden who was behind it." Wow, he had it all figured out from the get go. Someone did a great job setting up this bearded fanatic right from before it happened, in my view. It couldn't have had anything to do with this American's, all Americans', addiction to the consumption of gasoline. And holy crap my kind had caused a major share of today's problems, too: friggen dope smoking hippies. The utter stupidity and hatefulness of people impresses me, today. How dare someone smoke something other than tobacco or experience an altered state other than drunkenness.
This lying criminal, Richard Nixon, brought on the surge in the war on drugs and ruined the world, torturing millions of harmless people and increasing the power of violent criminal organizations. At that time, in the sixties and seventies, we were concerned about continued proliferation of warfare, environmental issues, nuclear dangers in arms proliferation and power plants. Today our concerns are being realized and the morons march on, gullible as ever. Barely do you hear of the latest disaster in Japan anymore, although its effects will be with us for tens of thousands of years. No one mentions that this disaster was totally preventable by placing the generators for the emergency cooling system, higher up near the roofs of the buildings. These plants were designed by people with engineering degrees who could not think outside the box, thinking ahead to a situation which could easily occur in an area prone to earthquakes and resulting Tsunamis. They copied the plans from plants existing in stable areas and did not think creatively enough, yet were given honors in University and laughed at people who did LSD and had inventive creative insights. Millions of people will suffer because these dummies graduated and were given jobs.
Just as today idiots wanting to spend more time in Afghanistan to avenge the deaths of those who have fallen. The legitimate government in power at the time of 911 said to coalition allies "show us the proof that Al Queada and Bin Laden had anything to do with the 911 act and we will turn him over." Canada belongs to the evil axis today and perpetrates crimes against humanity at the bidding of its master, implementing American drug policy on its people. Thousands of people die each decade and tens of thousands are incarcerated as direct and indirect victims, most of whom have never hurt anyone else due directly to their drug use. This paradigm is due to morons who hold the reigns of power and serve their own interests, like the self serving parliamentarians trying to appear tough on crime, who are on a highly political campaign to prohibit Salvia because they saw Miley Cirus do a hit on Youtube. Salvia is a common ornamental found in many flower beds. Oh boy, another lucrative product for criminal enterprise, eh! What a ship of fools! Has anyone seen a Youtube video of drunken teenagers? This of course is not political expedient to prohibit, because even judges and the Prime Minister swill martinis and we all know that prohibition of this substance didn't work, caused crime, violence and proliferation to ever younger consumers. It's all in the numbers of stupid people one has to persuade. There is a huge number of morons willing to believe what these parliamentarian "experts" tell them, because long ago they have left off thinking critically and eagerly consume whatever bullshit they are told to. Like the Vancouver Sun, the Courier, writing that there was a security incident that endangered the vice president's life at the Olympics because a security guard bought pot off me from my store on Broadway, or that the neighboring business could smell pot through the wall to the extent it made him noxious. What passes for good evidence, realistic reporting, truth, today, is pure crap.
Not once in all the so called in depth reporting on any channels that I have watched on TV in the remand center, have I EVER HEARD ANYONE MENTION THE FACT that the nuclear disaster could have been entirely avoided if the emergency generators to power the cooling systems had been placed higher up on earthquake proof, Tsunami untouchable platforms. Yet these morons of writing for local newspapers could attribute a security breach at last year's Olympics, because a security guard bought pot from me. I guess one needs the mentally expanded hardware achieved from the use of psychedelic substances to see the obvious on the first day the of disaster in Japan. If you google the cause of the nuclear disaster you will not find anything there but the Tsunami listed as the cause of the nuclear disaster. These friggen nuclear plants were supposed to have been able to withstand a Tsunami and would have, if there were electricity to power the emergency cooling systems.
Just as these "trained" experts couldn't see the obvious, today's legal experts and parliamentarians can't see the idiocy of their drug laws. The havoc and deaths which have resulted from this legal myopia will likely exceed that of the Japanese nuclear disaster, worldwide. Both are man made mistakes in trying to react to predictable, seemingly insurmountable forces of nature: earthquakes and the desire of humans to be free to peacefully do what they enjoy doing.
Here is a real expert's Blog, Prof. David Nutt. In his May 9th article Curiouser and curiouser: Could ecstasy actually heal brains as well as minds? Professor Nutt puts a lie to the crown prosecutor's assumption that I am harming people by selling MDMA. Lies stand in for evidence in any courtroom where a drug case is decided. It is no one's business what substances someone uses safely, including alcohol.
However you might feel that as all drugs may be harmful then ecstasy could surely only be harmful also? Well maybe not. We should remember that MDMA was developed as a therapeutic tool for psychotherapy and its successful role here was severely curtailed when the drug was made illegal. Thirty years on, MDMA has only recently been reintroduced into clinical trials with great success in one study in resistant PTSD [Mithoefer et al 2010].
But what about the rats – does it still cause brain damage there? A new paper shows an intriguing effect and one, which many will find paradoxical: MDMA improved recovery from brain injury rather than worsening it [Edut et al 2011]. This paper has not apparently received any media attention so far which I why I felt compelled to do what I could to make it more widely known.
In my own life I could use a little bit of help to counter the severe depression that the application of moronic drug laws has put me in. The only thing legally available to me without a prescription, alcohol, is dangerous and unappealing to me. But because idiocy rules and has permeated itself into legal standing, we must continue to suffer. All so that morons who have been elected/advanced into positions of power can harm society to enhance their political, judicial and legal careers by imposing their moral perceptions and ignoring the facts. Drug use when the user does it responsibly is no one else's business, just as is the use of garlic, gasoline, tobacco, alcohol.
Here are some thoughts of a friend with whom I agree:
They have tried to make us think drugs are illegal when they cannot be because it is persons who are regulated under the law and people have equality rights under neutral law. Drugs have no equality rights so they tried to make us think drugs not drug users. They took a&t(Alcohol and tobacco) & excused the users and abusers of it from the operation of the law as a policy because propaganda errors of law made them think drugs are illegal that all use is misuse and also they wanted to protect the market for a&t and not associate it with drugs that have negative cultural connotations but in fact the law is written to regulate and must distinguish between persons causing harm through misuse and persons concerned with peaceful use. It is not use itself that is a crime according to the Act. The Act is written to control problematic drug users not to make all use misuse because that can't be it erases people's equality rights to misconstruct, maladminiser and then misapply the law in that way.
The judge in Malmo thought that the CDSA concerns illegal drugs he could not see past the propaganda to see that it is a regulatory apparatus that drugs cannot be illegal that the law must distinguish between use and misuse and that it is perfectly fine to put a&t in and it would make no difference to any of the users.
The noble purpose to protect users from harmful substances is fine but it is being misused to target certain users of harmful drugs while exempting a particular market thereby applying the law in an arbitrary way especially with harm from a&t sixty times greater they are failing to protect people from the most harmful drugs while imprisoning other users of less harmful drugs.
The demand is that the Act be construed and applied in a neutral manner that does not violate common law and human rights. MiSS Users of the most harmful drugs A&T must ought to be regulated under the Act, but are not due to the misconstruction that is 'legal drugs' and proper assessment based on evidence based reasoning be used to determine where exemptions and regulations are appropriate proportional sentencing otherwise the Act as applied is arbitrary and therefore it is void.
I still have no evaluation on legal grounds as to why my request for stay of proceedings was not granted before Judge Rideout. The fact that he was able to dismiss my argument by saying "This is something I might entertain over Martinis with friends" has no valid legal basis for denying my request for a stay of proceedings. And just because some legal references like Judge Jackson's were 60 years old, does not invalidate them. It may actually give them more credence, because what we see in today's judicial remarks is a definite confusion in legal thought, brought about most likely by years of propaganda acceptance. Here was my presentation in court.
Your honor, I believe that my human rights are being violated by this process that seeks to abuse the processes of this honourable court by asking it to apply an unconscionable law to me, and I seek the protection of this court from what is both an abuse of process under common law, and a violation of my human rights. I am an amateur and this is my attempt to explain these two separate arguments.
There are two inequalities of treatment that apply to me should these proceedings not be stayed:
1) There is an unequal application of the Act as applied to persons concerned with the equally harmful drugs (alcohol and tobacco) without a rational and objective basis.
2) There is a failure to treat unlike cases differently, that is, the failure to regulate persons concerned in peaceful activities (re controlled drugs) differently from persons causing harm.
Those inequalities of treatment constitute unequal deprivation of liberty at common law and are discriminatory toward me under the Charter rights law entailed in Section 15, your honor, which grants equality before the law. I assert that this argument does not enter the political arena, but is squarely a legal argument that reveals that the decision makers have made errors of law, and that such errors fatally undermine the legitimacy of whatever policy ensues.
The common law argument includes a failure to use S 55 and 60 equally, proportionally, and rationally to achieve it’s objective of protecting the public against the scourge of the misuse of any harmful drug. Given that the jurisdictional facts are now made out regarding the profound harmfulness of tobacco and alcohol misuse upon society, there can be no justification for having a ‘separate but equal’ form of administration governing problematic drug users. Under such circumstances it is submitted that the government are obliged to act to give effect to their powers and to do so fully cognizant of the law that empowers them to do so.
The human rights law under the Charter includes S 2 (b) which upholds my freedom of thought, your honor.
Your honor, my position is that I refer to myself as an activist. I know that may sound arrogant to self-ascribe myself as an activist but I have felt compelled to create change in my community for the better based on what many experts and authorities think is a problem and what I also perceive and experience in my daily life, your honor.
I assert that the government has abused, and continues to abuse their powers in the administration of the Act, and that also the law as applied is inconsistent with my human rights that are protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I refer also to my lawful excuse. I base my lawful excuse on my belief that it is unconscionable to uphold an unconscionable law that is arbitrary and would deny my being. I have attempted to be lawful in my excuse.
I am sure that your honor will perform the highest duty of scrutiny to my argument.
The most important thing, your honor, is that I believe the Act under which I was charged is most unfair in the hands of government. Government have abandoned jurisdiction over the vast majority of drug misuse through an error of law that describes abusers of alcohol and tobacco as being concerned with ‘legal drugs‘. The Act regulates human action, not drug action and is expectant that any harmful drug be scheduled, and makes provision for regulations to be made to supervise the supply of such drugs in a responsible manner, see section 55 of the Act. The error of law that believes that the Act can only be used for outright prohibition results in another inequality of treatment that is treating peaceful and responsible users of some drugs in the same way as abusers and irresponsible users. This error perhaps explains why government feel an electoral pressure not to schedule alcohol or tobacco, they imagine, incorrectly that such status equates to prohibition. This is incorrect, the Act can act as an evaluative instrument to make sensible differentiation between circumstances that fairly address the mischief that the Act seeks to ameliorate, and those peaceful ones where it does not seek to interfere into personal liberty.
The most important thing, your honor, is to construe the neutral Act and scrutinize whether the exclusion of the users of the most harmful drugs to society from the Act is consistent with the purposes of the Act. In other words, your honor, there is authority to suggest that the government must act to ensure that the Schedules and regulations at the core of the operation of the Act are subject to legal and fair administration, and it is my understanding that this is an ongoing duty.
Your honor, there are as I have stated, two inequalities of treatment that are inherent in the administration of the Act that proceed these proceedings.
1) Your honor, the Act as applied is discriminatory toward me. The Act fails to treat my case like those of others in society who have similar behavior. There is an unequal application of the Act as it is applied to people who use the Scheduled drugs in my indictment, and the equally harmful drugs, that is alcohol and tobacco, without a rational and objective basis.
2) There is a failure to treat unlike cases differently, viz the failure to regulate persons concerned in peaceful activities (re controlled drugs) differently from persons causing harm.
These inequalities of treatment constitute unequal deprivation of liberty at common law and are discriminatory toward me under my Charter rights entailed in S. 15 which is equality before the law, your honor.
The Charter right includes S 2 (b) which upholds my freedom of thought.
Your honor, my position is that I refer to myself as an activist. I know that may sound arrogant to self-ascribe myself as an activist but I have felt compelled to bring attention to this issue based on what many experts and authorities think is a problem and what I also perceive and experience in my daily life.
I believe that I have established the basis of an argument that the government has abused their powers in the administration of the Act, and that also the law is inconsistent with my human rights that are protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I refer also to my lawful excuse. I am an amateur in these courts your honor and I regret that the way that I have expressed my lawful excuse has not been acceptable to these courts. However, I base my lawful excuse on my belief that it is unconscionable to uphold an unconscionable law that is arbitrary and would deny my being.
I am sure that your honor will perform the highest scrutiny to my argument.
The most important thing, your honor, is that I believe the Act under which I was charged is most unfair. The Act results in the two inequalities of treatment of which I have outlined so far and it also violates my freedom of thought.
Given that the jurisdictional facts are made out regarding the harmfulness of these substances, the government is duty bound to Schedule them accordingly in order to give effect to the objects and purpose of the Act.
It is my understanding your honor that the Act as applied is arbitrary. The Act discriminates against me. Given that the facts are made out regarding the harmfulness of these substances the government is duty bound to Schedule them into the Act accordingly in order to give effect to the objects and the purpose of the Act.
I consider that the government, your honor, does not have the legal right to arbitrarily pick and choose which harmful drugs should be the subject of the Schedules of the Act. The government must act to ensure that the Schedules and regulations at the core of the operation of the Act are subject to legal and fair administration and this is an ongoing duty.
Alcohol and tobacco are the two most harmful and dangerous drugs if measured by list of causalities. The government chooses to deal with alcohol and tobacco users separately. This means the exclusion of the users of the harmful drugs alcohol and tobacco from the Act as applied is arbitrary. But it is a principle in law that similar situations should receive similar treatment, and so the practice, your honor, of allowing the free-flow of the harmful drug alcohol in society, and even permitting wine-making, while imprisoning and otherwise depriving cannabis users of their property for choosing to use an analogous drug such as cannabis is clearly irrational and discriminatory.
Further, your honor, the Act fails to justifiably discriminate: the regulations for the non-medical use of those drugs excluded by government policy from the Act, that is, alcohol and tobacco, distinguish between reasonably safe, responsible drug use and trade; and unreasonable harmful irresponsible drug use, production and trade.
That is, your honor, regulations for the non-medical use of those drugs included by the Act fail to make this justifiable distinction, instead of applying a blanket prohibition of all property rights of possession, supply, production and export/import.
The Act as applied also fails to justifiably distinguish two distinct forms of unreasonably harmful use, production and trade: a) use or trade unreasonably harmful to the consumer or trader alone, ‘voluntary risks’, and b) use or trade unreasonably harmful to others, that is ‘involuntary risks.’
Voluntary risks do not infringe human rights while involuntary risks do. The Act as applied fails to justifiably discriminate between those in different situations.
I am an amateur your honor. I have had limited resources to cite case law while I have been jailed. I believe that the principles in the law I cite are transferable to our own Canadian law.
I cite the European human rights case of Thlimmenos v. Greece (2000) 31 EHRR 411 para 44: “The right not to be discriminated against in the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed is violated when States without an objective and reasonable justification fail to treat differently persons whose situations are significantly different.”
Further, in the US Supreme Court (Railway Express Agency Inc. v. New York 1949, para 112), Justice Jackson explained why the courts have a duty to prevent abuse of political power by upholding the right to equality before the law.
“There is no more effective practical guarantee 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 effected. Courts can take no better measure to assure that laws will be just than to require that laws be equal in operation.”
As a result of this abuse by the executive, your honor, a fair trial is not possible.
There has been a failure to consider making regulations under S 55 (1) (a) of the Act.
It appears, your honor, that the Parliament has neither stated nor fixed any criteria to guide the government’s decision making re drug control and classification under the relevant sections of the Act as applied.
The government, your honor, has fettered the Act as applied to an overly rigid and pre-determined policy of prohibition.
Further, your honor, the government has failed to understand and give effect to the Act’s policy and objectives.
The CDSA is arbitrary as applied. This indictment will lead to an abuse of process; the executive abuse of this power threatens my liberty and is discriminatory toward me according to the human rights law within the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I am seeking the court to confirm the abuse of power and declare that there should be a stay of these proceedings. The crux of this argument is that where the law is applied to a criminal defendant in such a way as to subject that defendant to severe inequality of treatment in terms of common law and human rights law, is the issue justifiable and am I entitled to the court’s protection?
I argue, your honor, that if the court finds abuse under any of the established judicial review headings, ie illegality, irrationality, and unfairness, then:
1) One or both of the inequalities of treatment exist; 2) they have abused the Court’s process and 3) my charges should be stayed.
I further submit to you, my honor, that the CDSA claims a power the CDSA does not possess, to exempt individuals or classes of individuals from the operation of the law by excluding de facto the dangerous or otherwise harmful drugs alcohol and tobacco from the Act’s control.
And:
The CDSA in the minds of the decision maker makes some drugs or substances legal, while making other drugs or substances illegal, when in fact it is people’s behavior that should be regulated with respect to any harmful drugs or substances.
Why has the government not acted in the public interest re alcohol and tobacco?
As I understand it, your honor, case law says the government must act when the law creates an imperative for them to do so. The fact they ignore the majority of drug misuse in this way is ultra vires the law and subjects me to inequality of treatment.
I refer, your honor, to S. 60 of the CDSA:
“The Government in Council may, by order, amend any of the Schedules I to Viii by adding to them or deleting from them any item or portion of an item, where the Governor in Council deems the amendment to be necessary in the public interest.”
I argue:
There is a failure to implement proportionally. There is a failure of reasonableness. There is a failure to make regulations under the powers of S. 55 of the Act. There is a failure to implement fairness. Why is alcohol and tobacco not in the Act? This does not mean prohibitions as Section 55 (1) (a) could create regulations to allow responsible use.
The common law violation includes the failure to use S 55 and 60 equally, proportionally and etc.
I also cite the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms S (2) (b).
Discrimination stands on its own, but it also applies to the ways that the law is utilized, so I argue that:
Governments and mal-administration of the drug law classification and control system through their ultra vires exemption from the law of the vast majority of harmful drug users (drinkers and smokers), and their failure to seek proportionate regulation of persons who use the controlled drugs responsibly (not the legitimate target of the Act) as a different class from those persons who do not (the intended target of the Act), results in an arbitrary and discriminatory differential between those who use alcohol for sacramental purposes, and those that use cannabis for the same ends.
Further:
My right to ‘freedom of thought’ or any person’s right to ‘freedom of thought’ is such an essential liberty that creates the foundation of civil rights, that it is one of the few unqualified rights.
I argue, your honor, that my activities do not impact upon public safety, the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others in the slightest, and even if an argument could be made that they might, they certainly do not impact to anything approaching the degree that the users of alcohol and tobacco do (as the government report submitted states in terms of the harm caused by misuse of these drugs being approximately sixty times greater than that caused by all of the currently controlled drugs combined.)
I do not argue the Act 2 (b) claim in terms of the practices of a formal religion or belief system, but in terms of access to thought, a state of being that is the precursor to all civil liberties, that is intrinsically part of my existence, my consciousness.
The matter of applying anxious scrutiny to the construction of the Act and the conduct of the executive in respect of their legal obligations is a matter par excellence for the courts; this is not a practical claim made within a legal arena; the case here concerns Rule of Law.
I object to the introduction of irrelevant political motives into the administration of law by the executive.
At this juncture I bear the burden on the balance of probabilities of demonstrating a prima facie case that the administration is being carried out contrary to any of the raised common law principles of illegality, irrationality, unfairness and unreasonableness and/or the separate challenge on human rights grounds.
Such common law principle rooted in the doctrine of the equal applicability of laws may give rise to a finding of substantive or procedural defects within the administration of the legislation.
Your honor, I refer now to my Human Rights Claim, in overview:
I cite the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms S 15 (1) - The prohibition against discrimination.
Once again your honor I must explain that I have had limited access to case law because I am jailed. But I have done the best I could with the resources available to me. I believe that the principles are transferable to our own Canadian law.
In Pretty v. United Kingdom (2002) 35 EHRR 1 at 77, the Strasbourg Court said:
“Strong arguments based on the rule of law could be raised against any claim by the executive to exempt individuals or classes of individuals from the operation of the law.”
This is especially so where the exemption is contrary to the legitimate aim and principles for which the legislation was created and intended.
And so, while asserting that the “search for balance”…constitutes the foundation of a “democratic society”, in Chassagnou and Others v. France (1999) 29 EHRR 615 at 112, the Strasbourg Court described the crux of such matters.
“Although individual interests must on occasion be subordinated to those of a group, democracy does not simply mean that the views of a majority must always prevail: a balance must be achieved which ensures the fair and proper treatment of minorities and avoids any abuse of a dominant position.”
More, in Thlimmenos v. Greece (2000) 31 EHRR 411 the Strasbourg Court said:
“The right not to be discriminated against in the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed under the convention is also violated when states without an objective and reasonable justification fail to treat differently persons whose situations are significantly different.”
And:
“It is a principle of fundamental justice that laws should not be arbitrary (R v. Malmo Levine) That is, the state cannot limit an individual’s rights where “it bears no relation to, or is inconsistent with, the objective that lies behind (it)” (Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney General.)
Yet, as applied by the Executive, the Act fails to justifiably distinguish the relevant differences between differing use risks and/or outcomes of controlled drugs use, viz responsible versus irresponsible use, ie use versus misuse.
In summary, as applied by successive Governments, the Act discriminates on the grounds of property, drug orientation, legal status, association with a national minority, and political power within the ambits of two or more Convention rights. I have had limited access to read these Convention rights but I believe they are the Canadian equivalent of what is termed in European law to be Article 1 Protocol 1, Articles 8 & 9.
Further, my ‘freedom of thought’ or anyone’s ‘freedom of thought’ is engaged and infringed due to the nature of the property controlled under the Act as applied, and since the freedom of thought is an absolute right, any interference in or limitation upon thought engages it.
Government respects the right of consumers of the harmful drugs alcohol and tobacco to ‘alter mental functioning’ but denies this right to consumers of cannabis and other “controlled” drugs despite the evidence that many such drugs are lesser or equally harmful than alcohol and tobacco.
Alternately, if such restrictions on S. 2 vis-à-vis controlled drugs are proportionate and in the public interest then Government is failing to protect the public from the equally or more harmful drugs alcohol and tobacco.
This claim is freestanding and conjunct discrimination in on the grounds of property, drug orientation, association with a national minority and legal status.
S. 55 means that the Act as applied does not mandate prohibition but can be used to regulate persons (not drugs really) so there is no reason why peaceful use cannot be respected and alcohol and tobacco included.
These errors of law cause the inequalities of treatment stated above in this text by preventing the Government from giving proper effect to the Act’s policy.
I ask the Court to confirm the abuse and stay the proceedings.
Klaus Kaczor.
March 16, 2011.
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