Harper’s Faith-Based Drug War

We should not pretend that Bill S-10 has anything to do with evidence – or with making our country a safer place in which to live.

by Neil Boyd Associate Director, Criminology, Simon Fraser University.

The Harper Conservatives are under fire for their extraordinarily expensive legislative initiative, Bill S-10. Among other things, the bill seeks to spend at least hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on prison building, in order to impose a mandatory minimum term of six months in jail for anyone who grows more than six marijuana plants. Most Canadians, experts and non-experts alike, have criticized the proposal as costly and counter-productive, noting that it will imprison individuals who are mostly non-violent and who sell to willing adult consumers.