I wish to comment on the raids of medical marijuana dispensaries in Chilliwack. It’s hard to argue with city council’s official position that the dispensaries contravene federal law and city bylaws, but I strongly suspect that council’s legal posturing is nothing more than a smokescreen intended to mask their “moral” objection to medical marijuana, no doubt to appease the more socially conservative element in our community.
I’m not a medical marijuana user myself, but I believe laws, and the enforcement of those laws, should be based on science and reason, not hysteria and blind ideology. I find it ironic that the most vehement opposition to medical marijuana comes from so-called Christians. Has it never occurred to them that their all-knowing creator may have put this amazing plant, used safely and successfully as a medicine in numerous cultures around the world for millennia, on this Earth for good reason?
There is a real need for this medicine in Chilliwack, and the Mayor and council are wrong to take such a heavy-handed approach towards a business they (or a certain segment of Chilliwack residents) don’t approve of, while taking a vastly different approach with another high profile bylaw-violating business. This is clearly discrimination. Since the city’s mandate is to enact and enforce bylaws, not criminal law, why are the bylaw penalties not assessed solely on the degree to which the businesses violate city bylaws and not for other reasons that are outside of the city’s business? The wildly differing penalties that are being handed out for bylaw infractions to businesses the council likes and doesn’t like stinks of hypocrisy. As for the Chilliwack RCMP, I’m outraged that they’re wasting my tax dollars on persecuting sick people and the people who are trying to provide them with a safe and natural medicine. A responsible police service strives to protect the entire community from real threats, not some of the community from imagined threats. Surely with all the real crime in this community that actually does harm people, the RCMP could find higher priority issues to pour their resources into than harassing a provider of medicine that is trying to help people.
Dispensing medical marijuana is a legitimate, medically proven enterprise that is here to stay, and will only continue to grow, because there is a need, there is growing demand, and the majority of Canadians and British Columbians want it to be available. Trying to put the genie back in the bottle is fruitless, destructive, and irrational.
Doug Thorn,
Chilliwack