Charlottetown newspaper cooks the news to sell papers

Most people are repulsed by the sight of Col. Russell Williams who was convicted of rape and sadistically murdering two women after a career of rape and stealing womens’ under garments.

The Charlottetown Guardian chose that front page position to report the false story that “Thirty charged for drugs at schools” using a drug that 20% of adult Canadians consider recreational.

The headline and the story are sensationally exaggerating the story for no other reason that selling papers, which is yellow journalism at its worst.

Yes the story is wrong and it slanders the young people involved. These are not adults – they are the sons and daughters of local residents. They don’t deserve to be arrested or to be slandered by the Guardian.

Police did round up thirty young people but “drug-related charges are pending against eight people, six of whom are high school students” not 30 as the Guardian reported. CBC.

22 students were subjected to police detention, search and interrogation for passing joints around in the Holy Redeemer Church parking lot among other places.

The police know you cannot get a criminal conviction for even possessing a few joints, so why detain these young people?

It’s a pre-civic election ploy to show Mayor Clifford Lee is tough on drugs, like the City backhoe that has gone down my street every morning this week.

The whole episode is so bogus.  “In addition, he said, more than 30 people have been identified as either using or selling marijuana and other drugs, both on and around the school properties,” said the CBC

About 20% of high school students have smoked marijuana at some point. “The world drug-use study by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said that 16.8% of Canadians aged 15 to 64 smoked marijuana or used other cannabis products in 2004, the most recent year for which statistics were cited.”  National Post

The “raid” wasn’t too effective if all the police could identify was 30 people. Of the 2,100 young people in both schools, approximately 400 have used marijuana. About 40 of the teaching staff use marijuana according to statistics.

Why don’t the police round up the teachers who use marijuana?

Probably because it’s easier to do video surveillance on a group of young people hanging out behind a church passing a joint around.

Now that they have made a big deal about the “raid” – which is as important as a mass-murderer down at the Charlottetown Guardian, children will have to be charged. Someone will have to go to court and the judicial system will try to nail someone with a criminal record.

The rest of those children will be suspended or expelled, their education cut short to sell a few newspapers, to get a dead mayor elected one more time.

Which one of the reporters at the Guardian or CBC hasn’t smoked grass? Which one of the City police, the prosecutors, the judges, the court clerks and other officials hasn’t tried marijuana?

Most jurisdictions in Canada wouldn’t even prosecute cases like this.

Pot or marijuana is a relatively harmless drug that is used by so many people in Canadian society it should be legal. Old attitudes and religious mores keep us persecuting the young and the poor.

If you are a rich MP like Conservative Rahim Jaffer, you can get arrested for DUI and have coke on your possession. The Crown won’t prosecute you.

If you are a Grade XII student at Colonel Gray or Charlottetown Rural, a few of you won’t get your high school diploma. That seems fair.

Why aren’t the police in Charlottetown trying to round up the coke and cocaine dealers in town? There are certainly enough of them. How about arresting some middle aged mothers selling their Oxycontin tablets for $50 a pill?

The “war on drugs” is a totally ineffective response to drug use in society. We have wasted billions on it and not reduced consumption. There are other approaches but they don’t involve arresting people.

In the meantime, more young people will get arrested and branded for life. And the Charlottetown Guardian will have a banner day selling newspapers.

For the record – while I have shared the odd joint, I don’t particularly like marijuana. My social drugs of choice are beer, gin and win in that order. More people die and kill others from alcohol than any other drug. (I keep repeating that at the risk of being an outsider at most parties in Charlottetown, but for the record I am not a “pot smoking pro-marijuana hippie.”

It is totally wrong to have laws that make people live on the wrong side of the law and I would never encourage anyone to break the law. I’m not pro marijuana but I am for ending the insanity of the prohibition laws.

By Stephen Pate, NJN Network