In Time To Defeat It

Peter Hitchens writes:

One of the most thumping lies you will ever hear is the repeated claim by marijuana fans that legalising their poison will 'take it out of the hands of criminals'. When they first started saying it, it was plainly false. Legal dope would obviously be taxed. And criminals would try to undercut legal sellers, by avoiding that tax.

Now news comes from Canada of the failure of its five-year-old marijuana legalisation scheme. Thousands of workers are being laid off as ambitious new dope companies fail. As anyone could have foretold, the criminal gangs, largely untroubled by defeatist police, can undercut the legal suppliers on price, because they do not pay tax. They can also ignore the pitiful attempts at 'regulation' which the legalisers always go on about.

As Professor Michael Armstrong, of Brock University in Ontario, puts it: 'The big trade-off in legal cannabis is: how do you make the legal market attractive enough to get all the existing users to go with the legal weed, but not so attractive that you get a whole bunch of new users starting up.'

Even the Canadian government, one of the most naïve bodies in the universe, estimates that 33 per cent of the trade was still in the hands of crooks four years after legalisation. How can they be sure it isn't much higher? They can't.

Meanwhile in California, another pioneer in legal dope, the Los Angeles Times has uncovered severe corruption in the granting of licences for cannabis businesses in the state.

Once, the claim that legalising this pestilent, life-ruining drug would remove it from criminal hands was just ill-researched propaganda. Now it is a proven lie, and you should bear this in mind every time you hear anybody saying it.

Evil always tries to advance behind a phalanx of lies, for otherwise people would see it for what it is, in time to defeat it.