With marijuana scheduled to be legalized this summer, the federal government is looking at the possibility of amnesty for people with convictions for simple pot possession.
We hope they're not just blowing smoke.
We are entering unknown territory with this drug; nobody knows all the repercussions of legalization, but it is clear that criminalization has made marijuana a weapon to wreck lives.
Both nationally and in the North, the number of police-reported cannabis-related charges are in decline, a downward trend that has been underway since 2011, according to police-reported statistics released by Statistics Canada.
In 2016, police charged 29 people in the Northwest Territories with a marijuana possession offence, the fewest since 1998 and a substantial decrease from the 51 who were charged the year before.
In Yukon, police charged 18 people with possession while in Nunavut 16 people were charged.
Nationally, 17,733 people were charged for possession of cannabis in 2016. The majority of the 95,400 drug offences that year were cannabis related, and the majority of those were possession offences.
Offenders guilty of trafficking, production and distribution of a drug, even one as benign as pot, are guilty of a serious breach of the public trust. They have earned their criminal records.
But why should people guilty of simple possession continue to pay for using a product that may soon be for sale on liquor store shelves?
Their criminal records are no minor matter; they can have very serious, lifelong consequences.
According to the Canadian Bar Association, the maximum penalty for a first conviction of possession of up to 30 grams of marijuana is a $1,000 fine or six months in jail. For a second offence, the maximums are a $2,000 fine and one year in jail, or both, but that’s just the start of it.
You might also receive a criminal record, which could prevent you from travelling outside the country, working certain jobs, applying for citizenship or worse.
For instance, in 2009 Kim and Craig MacNearney were caught with about 20 pot plants after authorities in Yellowknife received an anonymous tip that the couple had a marijuana growing operation in their home.
After their arrest, the couple's two young children were apprehended and spent two weeks in foster care before they got them back. They were charged with possession and after six years before the courts the pair were sentenced to three months under house arrest, two months of probation and 100 hours of community service.
Kim MacNearney, a prominent marijuana activist who organized the city’s first 4/20 rally, stated she’d started smoking marijuana to help her cope with back pain and started growing her own to avoid having to buy it off the streets.
Granted, 20 plants is a lot of dope. Under proposed NWT legislation, adults will be allowed to grow marijuana at home but limited to four plants.
Statistics Canada has found that 12.3 per cent of Canadians aged 15 years and older were using cannabis in 2015.
How can such a massive number of people be engaging in a criminal behaviour while only a fraction of that number have a record?
It is outrageous and immoral that millions of Canadians, including our self-confessed pot smoking prime minister, should be allowed to flout the law while thousands of others carry the burden and stigma of a criminal conviction.
If society has decided that it was wrong to make cannabis illegal neither is it right to leave undone the criminal status of people caught using it.