If you want to neglect British Columbian growers, have your cannabis taxed and regulated, and ignore other fundamental issues in our society such as an erosion of personal and economic liberty then, by all means, vote.
I don’t even care who you vote for, just do it and keep to yourself.
Don’t make me feel like I’m somehow “less Canadian” because I choose other means of change.
I am strictly against collectivism of any kind, and democracy enables people to live at the expense of others, to expropriate their property under the guise of “social justice,” “the children,” “environmental sustainability,” or even “legal marijuana.”
It is not democracy that will protect the rights of cannabis patients, but the rule of law.
Many confuse democracy with the rule of law, but in a free society, the judiciary is an independent governing apparatus – or preferably – apparatuses. Unfortunately, democracy has politicized the judiciary by bringing them under a hierarchical monopoly of ultimate-decision making, paid for by us, the taxpayers.
There is a crisis in the western legal tradition that democracy cannot fix, as democracy caused it.
Politicians are the ones who said you cannot smoke cannabis, and politicians are now the ones still saying “no” or “okay, maybe” and, “yes but only after our approval.” Politicians are the ones who codified common-law through legislation and created the democratic tyranny that classical liberals warned us about.
Cannabis legalization through the democratic process imposes the will of the majority on the minority.
Perhaps a small coastal town in New Brunswick doesn’t want legal cannabis. Who are the voters in British Columbia to tell them otherwise? And, likewise, what kind of conservative Albertan would impose his will on British Columbian cannabis patients?
Voting gives us the ability to exercise force without engaging in coercion ourselves. It masks the violence all states are predicated on.
Western democracies, including Canada, have constitutions and bills and charters that are supposed to protect the rights of individuals when faced with the tyranny of the majority. But what constitution lives up to this ideal?And is the problem also not a tyranny of special interest groups?
A defect ignored by Canada’s founders despite the blatant crony-capitalism going in the banking and railroad industries.
Author Frank Karsten nailed it when he said, “a democratic constitution is like a chastity belt worn by the same person who has the key. And even if the courts judge a bill to be unlawful, politicians simply change the law.”
When people figure out they can vote themselves money, the politicians who win are the ones that bribe voters with the most benefits.
Some would argue that legal cannabis doesn’t fall into this category, but “tax and regulate” are not revenue-neutral.
Where will the state get the money to regulate a substance it previously deemed illicit? From increased taxes? From the police budgets that allocated so much to a failed policy?
Governments cannot create wealth, they can only finance their budgets by expropriating from the productive members of society.
Ending prohibition does not require more government bureaucracy, but that’s exactly what’s being proposed.
People think there are no alternatives to democracy, but they confuse the principles that determine a free society with the standards of a democratic state.
There are failed democratic states around the world because there is nothing inherent in democracy that promotes liberty.
What made Western countries successful hasn’t been the “right to vote” but respect for the rule of law, property rights, and individual and economic liberties that included contractual freedoms. Principles that democracy are severely eroding.
But if all you want is to buy cannabis from the local corner-store, without thinking too hard about who grows it, or why it was illegal for so long and why it must be now be taxed and regulated by the state, then by all means vote.
Just stop being so smug about it, you’re not helping.