Legalize NOW

[Anonymous]

CN AB: Column: Deaths Lend Urgency To 'Trivial' Pot Debate
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n365/a06.html
Newshawk: CMAP http://www.mapinc.org/cmap
Votes: 0
Webpage: http://www.canada.com/calgary/calgaryhe ... d-85c3-aa1
Pubdate: Sat, 05 Mar 2005
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2005 Calgary Herald
Contact: http://www.canada.com/calgary/calgaryherald/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Dan Gardner, CanWest News Service
Note: Dan Gardner is an Ottawa Citizen columnist
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/author/Dan+Gardner
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Rochfort+Bridge (Rochfort Bridge)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

DEATHS LEND URGENCY TO 'TRIVIAL' POT DEBATE

In the eight years that I have been studying and critiquing the war on marijuana, I've occasionally been asked why I spend so much time on an issue many people think is, at best, trivial.  I answered by citing the involvement of major organized crime networks, the billions of dollars spent on enforcement and the criminalization of hundreds of thousands of otherwise lawful citizens for consuming a substance that is, by any fair measure, less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco.

But today there is a simpler response: Four men are dead.

Let this be the end of scant attention, of dismissive comments, of news stories laced with trivializing puns and juvenile jokes.

Marijuana is an urgent issue of public policy.  The police have been complaining for years that the media and the public do not appreciate that this is a serious matter, that the spread of marijuana grow-ops is a risk to public safety, that good men and women are in jeopardy every time they bang on a door with a search warrant.  They were right all along.

Let us respect the police by treating the issue with the same solemnity and gravity they surely feel while contemplating the deaths of their comrades.

That means, among others things, not acting rashly.  It is only human that the shock and sorrow of such a horrific crime would give way to anger and an urge to hit hard and fast.  Already there have been numerous calls for tougher enforcement and harsher laws, including severe mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana growers.

Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan says the government is considering just that, while RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli has promised a crackdown and a renewed commitment to making "a drug-free Canada."

But to treat the issue with solemnity and gravity means precisely to take care that passion does not overwhelm judgment.  It means gathering the evidence, examining the arguments and thinking hard about the way forward.  It means asking ourselves how it ever came to be that police officers are being murdered because of a plant.

That's all marijuana is, after all.  It's just a plant, a common and easily grown one at that.  In many cultures, its consumption was lawful for millennia.  And in all that time, the bond between thugs, mayhem, murder and marijuana that we see today did not exist.

That changed early in the 20th century.  In 1923, Canada -- with not a word of discussion in Parliament -- banned marijuana.  Other countries - -- motivated as Canada was by a toxic mix of popular myths, pseudo-science and racism -- did the same.  The moment they did, the trade left the hands of law-abiding producers and fell to the exclusive control of criminals.  That control, not any property of the drug itself, is the steel link between marijuana and crime.

At the same time in the United States, Prohibition created precisely the same link between alcohol and crime -- the only difference being that it was broken when alcohol was legalized in 1933.

This brief history is relatively uncontroversial.  Aside from a few zealots who still cling to the fantasy that there is something about the chemistry of marijuana that makes users more inclined to crime, no one disputes that the bond between marijuana and crime is exclusively the result of the fact that marijuana is illegal.  The grow-ops, the gangsters and, yes, the dangers faced by police officers enforcing the law: All these exist because of a policy decision.

"The way we've done it now is marijuana has become the exclusive prerogative of the criminal element because there's such fantastic profit in it," said Nick Taylor, a former Alberta senator.  "I'm not saying that the four men would be alive if we had legalized marijuana, but I suspect they might be."

Legalization would undeniably break the link between marijuana and crime.  That's a major reason why a Senate Special Committee recommended that marijuana be legalized and regulated.

Unfortunately, the police ignored the senators and their 650-page report -- one of the most comprehensive ever produced in any country - -- and instead pressed for more resources and tougher laws.

The government, too, never gave the Senate report the slightest consideration.  Instead, the Liberals introduced a bill that would "decriminalize" the possession of small amounts of marijuana -- meaning a ticket instead of a criminal charge -- while boosting the maximum sentences for large-scale growers.  And this was before the murders on Thursday and Anne McLellan's promise to consider further sentencing increases for growers.

If this issue is to be treated seriously, this dismissiveness must end and a real discussion must be had.  By a remarkable coincidence, the Liberal policy convention in Ottawa this weekend offers a real hope for that.

Two resolutions are on the agenda: One calls for tougher sentences on grow operators; the other calls for the legalization of marijuana.  It's a good chance to ask some hard questions.

Most basically, why does anyone think harsher sentences will accomplish anything? The police say this will deter would-be growers, noting that in the United States, producers and traffickers are punished far more severely.  But criminological research consistently shows tougher sentences do not deter crime.  And the police never mention that despite the tough American sentences, and the immense sums of money spent fighting the war on marijuana, government reports routinely find that the U.S.  is awash in marijuana, and the largest source of that pot is the United States itself.

Recent Canadian history makes the same point.  In the early 1960s, Canada's already tough drug laws were made tougher on the advice of the top American drug official who insisted that longer sentences deterred drug crime.  Yet almost immediately after the new sentences came into force, drug production, dealing and use began to soar -- and kept on rising for almost two decades, even at a time when the simple possession of a joint could mean serious jail time.

Here's a simpler question: Can those who support a crackdown name any country in which tougher law enforcement has successfully suppressed the illicit marijuana trade? A few years ago, a United Nations report attempted to dismiss the argument that drug prohibition is futile by pointing out that there was one successful example: Maoist China.  Assuming we wish to remain a liberal democracy, what reason do those advocating a crackdown on marijuana production think it will accomplish anything more than to put more officers' lives at risk?

As always, reasonable people can differ on this issue, and if those who insist on sticking with prohibition have a case to make -- with evidence, not the assumptions and conjecture that too often pass for argument -- I want to hear it.  Honest disagreement is honorable.

Much less so is hypocrisy.  Over the years I've had many private conversations about drugs with politicians, political staff, senior civil servants, journalists and police officers.  And what I hear in private is not what I hear in public.  In Official Ottawa, a remarkable number of people -- including some well known and powerful figures -- think the war on marijuana is nothing less than ludicrous.  And truth be told, more than a few like to smoke an occasional joint.

As long as marijuana could be dismissed as a trivial issue, this hypocrisy could be shrugged off as a venal sin.  But now four men are dead.

They died in pursuit of a futile policy, and if that policy doesn't change more officers will put themselves at risk.  Sooner or later more names will be etched into the police memorials.

More than anything, treating the issue with due solemnity and gravity requires honesty

It is time those who have kept silent to find their courage and speak up.

[Antigen]

http://fornits.com/quotes.php?rno=716

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.


--Voltaire (1694-1778)

[Anonymous]

If it had been prohibition in the US, this disturbed criminal would have been bootlegging booze.
If pot was legal and cheap, this criminal would have been manufacturing meth.
If meth was legal he would have been creating another substance to sell.
He was stealing cars and selling parts, and was engaged in buying firearms illegally, plus who-knows-what else.

Do I feel like pot should be legal? Yes. Would I want my kids smoking it it - no. Would legalization of dope have prevented those four RCMP officers from being ambushed and gunned down? Not a chance.

[Anonymous]

14% of Canada's RCMP is infiltrated by the HA's. Without drug money the HA's would have less power and have to rely more on their legal businesses. If the HA's had less power, I doubt that a serial killer running an HA bar would have been allowed off of the hook for a good 20 years. Canada has clearly lost the "war on drugs" and reached a point of no return. Time to start taking the power back.

[Anonymous]

On 2005-03-05 20:18:00, Anonymous wrote:

"If it had been prohibition in the US, this disturbed criminal would have been bootlegging booze.

If pot was legal and cheap, this criminal would have been manufacturing meth.

If meth was legal he would have been creating another substance to sell.

He was stealing cars and selling parts, and was engaged in buying firearms illegally, plus who-knows-what else.



Do I feel like pot should be legal? Yes. Would I want my kids smoking it it - no. Would legalization of dope have prevented those four RCMP officers from being ambushed and gunned down? Not a chance. "

I agree, but I posted the article to obtain some balance, since people like Anne McLellan and Guiliano Zacardelli (the RCMP head honcho) have been making some very stupid statements about stiffening penalties as a result of the killings.  
This merely reflects the incompetence of the senior officials of government.
Very very stupid statements.
Interesting, though that the killer's dad was on TV saying about how he had turned him over to the police because he was smoking pot as a 12 yearold child ... Hmmm Tough Love, Vause style???  Was it the pot that made him crazy, or was it something else?  Or was he just born evil?

[Anonymous]

Or maybe his livelihood and freedom was threatened so he freaked as a last resort.

[Anonymous]

On 2005-03-05 23:21:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Or maybe his livelihood and freedom was threatened so he freaked as a last resort. "

Er.... No, I don't think so.  He'd freak as a first resort.  I'd guess he was a paranoid schizophrenic.  Despite what his dad says, people like that are made, not born.

[Anonymous]

On 2005-03-05 21:07:00, Anonymous wrote:

"14% of Canada's RCMP is infiltrated by the HA's. Without drug money the HA's would have less power and have to rely more on their legal businesses. If the HA's had less power, I doubt that a serial killer running an HA bar would have been allowed off of the hook for a good 20 years. Canada has clearly lost the "war on drugs" and reached a point of no return. Time to start taking the power back.



"

What's an HA?

[Antigen]

Hell's Angels.

Organized crime has grown immesurably since the onset of prohibition. Before alcohol prohibition in the US, Al Capone was a chiseller; literally. He'd been in trouble w/ the law for stealing gravestones, chiseling off the names and dates and reselling them. Now that's a downright mean and rotten thing to do. But is it comperable to, say, recruiting children to run product or using violence and threats of violence to keep affairs in order?

See, that's the real issue here with the "drug" problem. With rare exeption, we're not having a lot of problems w/ people doing evil things to each other because of the effects of the drugs. It's because of the money. If the money were legal, then the holders of it could protect it the usual way w/ insurance and force of law. Since it's illegal money, they can't do that.

That's what makes prohibition so damaging to society. It creates a market demand for law breaking, violent, tough thugs to carry out the grunt work of the trade. And so the labour market responds to meet that demand.

It's no different from the way the mass productin of automobiles has created a market demand for auto mechanics. Mechanics aren't born, they're made. If there were no cars, no one would bother learning to fix them. But there are, so they do. Same w/ illegal drugs. If there were no illegal drugs, pharmacies and other legal distributors would see a slight increase in trade w/ normal profit margins. But the entire aparatus of the illegal trade would collapse just as Al Capone's empire did when we stopped his gravy train by passing the VVIst Amendment.

Stiffening penalties north of the 49th will only bring about similar conditions to those south of the 49th. Here it's not really Earth shaking news when a cop or two gets shot over some drug money. In fact it's quite common, as is retalliation made to look like suicide or like a drug deal gone bad (which, in the end, it essentially is)

If that's what Canada wants, then by all means, take all of our drug policy and implement it just as we've been doing for years. But, of course, if that's what you want having had the opportunity to watch it play out down here, then they must all be friggin crazy!

I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
--Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father and inventor

[Antigen]

Folks, according to this latest, we've all been HAD by the manic drug warriors!

This does chap my ass! It also demonstrates just how deteched from reality these people are. To our neighbors to the north I say take the oportunity NOW to route these sadistic lunatics from your government. They are more dangerous than you can imagine. But you need not imagine. Just spend a little time in any major US city.

Newshawk: CMAP http://www.mapinc.org/cmap
Pubdate: Mon, 07 Mar 2005
Source: National Post (Canada)
Webpage:
http://www.canada.com/national/national ... 59f1a72e21
Copyright: 2005 Southam Inc.
Contact: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Colby Cosh, National Post
Note: From MAP: As reported in many newspapers by the wire service CanWest
News Service Alberta Premier Ralph Klein told reporters Friday that "the
officers were slain at a 'significant' grow-op with 300 plants worth
$300,000." See the National Post story at
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n370/a02.htm But it turns out, as the
CBC reported Sunday, "When the Mounties arrived at the farm, they found
what they say was stolen truck parts and about 20 marijuana plants." and
"that officers had gone to the farm to repossess a pickup truck." See the
CBC report at
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national ... 50305.html
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Rochfort+Bridge (Rochfort Bridge)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)
 
 WHAT THEY DIED FOR

Like many other Albertans, I followed the news of Thursday's shootout near Mayerthorpe with increasing horror and disbelief. That day, RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli was among the first to advance the now widely accepted view that the four Mounties killed in Alberta gave their lives as part of the toll of the war on drugs -- though most didn't go quite as far as he did.

"Today," he said, "the RCMP continued its vigilant effort to detect and dismantle illegal drug manufacturing and to respond to the calls for a drug-free Canada. We know that these are most serious issues and challenges, made complicated by the involvement of organized crime, the availability of weapons and risks posed by individuals who choose the path of violence and destruction over peace and good. And today we recognize with gratitude and respect that four of our own paid the highest price to fight this fight, to make Canada a safer place for all of us."

I reread this paragraph several times over as details of the murders emerged over the weekend. Every time I reviewed it, Commissioner Zaccardelli grew a little more fatuous in retrospect.

It was obvious, even on Thursday, that the young policemen hadn't been killed by anything resembling an "organized criminal." Then we learned that the discovery of the marijuana in the fatal quonset was purely accidental, and had little to do with anyone's "vigilant effort" to suppress illegal substances.

But there was still one thing saving the commissioner from the appearance of total dissociation from the truth: Whatever events had brought the martyred policemen to the Roszko farm, they did find a "grow-op" there, and they did, by their deaths, inadvertently bring Canada a little closer to being "drug-free."

And on Saturday we learned exactly how much closer they brought us: 20 plants. That's how many were found on the killer's property -- 20 marijuana plants. Enough to generate about a half-ounce per day, given a three-month harvest and the RCMP's own standard yield figures. Some grow-op.

I doubt we have enough Mounties to make Moose Jaw drug-free, let alone the whole country. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was something more fundamentally disturbing about Commissioner Zaccardelli's message than its mere factual status. He seemed to be saying, after all, that the sacrifice of four young men's lives on these terms was regrettable, but justifiable and noble. With respect to the demands that that moment placed upon him, I think the whole idea is offensive.

The truth is that those cops were at the Roszko farm to carry out the most mundane police duty imaginable: to help a bailiff repossess a truck. The texture of every police officer's life is woven from crummy little tasks like this -- which, attended to day by day, painful increment by painful increment, sustain the decrees of justice and preserve us all in our property, our personal liberty, and the network of capitalist linkages that keep us fed and clothed and fat and happy.

That debts will be honoured is the sort of reciprocal expectation we rely on, unthinkingly, every minute of our lives. On mercifully rare occasions, we resort to the law to make it work. And in enforcing the notion of honouring freely assumed obligations, policemen do something truly honourable. How crass is Mr. Zaccardelli's dream of a "drug-free Canada" compared with the simple vision of a civil society where people pay what they owe. Those four constables deserved better from their commander.

Still, the commissioner, the Liberal Party of Canada and dozens of individuals in authority are paying tribute by advocating harsher measures against "grow-ops" run by "organized crime." Funny sort of tribute. We now know it has nothing to do with the circumstances of those officers' deaths, and we already knew it wouldn't have saved their lives anyway.

The northern Alberta airwaves were filled on Thursday night with the voices of ordinary people from Mayerthorpe who knew James Roszko. The community is unanimous in its lack of surprise at what he did. Roszko was hostile, creepy and violent. He had a long history of confrontations with cops and other officials, had been convicted of threatening behaviour and property crimes, and had wounded a teenager with a rifle in 1999. His various criminal acts, from the age of 18 to the day he died, almost defy enumeration. Yet for all his legal trouble, the courts were mostly powerless to imprison him for any significant length of time. He was, it seems, a fanatical amateur student of the law who retained excellent counsel. He was able to wriggle out of at least 17 criminal charges at one time or another.

The magistrates' best chance to protect Mayerthorpe and its cops came in April, 2000, when Roszko was convicted of having repeatedly molested a child over a seven-year period in the 1980s. From the ages of 10 to 17, the victim was forced into sodomy and degradation by a grown man under the constant threat of a fatal beating. For this, Roszko served about 21 months in prison. If Canadian justice had penalized him according to popular notions of right and wrong, he would still have been in jail on Thursday -- and would have stayed until he was much too old to engage in a firefight.

The law failed the public here, not to speak of the four constables. And the politicians who have been hyperventilating about a rapist's horticultural pastimes -- Ralph Klein, Anne McLellan, Randy White, and the like -- are failing the public now. They are engaging in a calculated distraction that presents them as part of a thin line standing between us and an enormous, inchoate, "organized" evil. And they've been trampling the graves of the real heroes to do it.

Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the violet. The squirrel will come and sit upon your knee, the logcock will wake you in the morning. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.
-- John Muir

[Anonymous]

" The law failed the public here, not to speak of the four constables. And the politicians who have been hyperventilating about a rapist's horticultural pastimes -- Ralph Klein, Anne McLellan, Randy White, and the like -- are failing the public now. They are engaging in a calculated distraction that presents them as part of a thin line standing between us and an enormous, inchoate, "organized" evil. And they've been trampling the graves of the real heroes to do it. "  
The National Post

And Ginger said:
 
"Folks, according to this latest, we've all been HAD by the manic drug warriors!"

Yes, indeed, As the one who started this thread, I have to admit I was taken in by the obscene ranting of Anne McLellan, Ralph Klein and especially Guiliano Zaccardelli.  This tragedy has nothing, that is NOTHING to do with the drug war in anything other than a tangential manner.  All it goes to demonstrate is how ruthless, unconscionable politicians and senior administrators exploit moral panics for their own power agendas.  Let calmer heads prevail.....
As Ginger says:
" This does chap my ass! It also demonstrates just how detached from reality these people are."

[Hamiltonf]

I was too quick to blame deaths on drugs, RCMP chief admits
Zaccardelli says he condemned grow-ops without knowing full story of ill-fated raid on farm
 
Allan Woods
National Post

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

CREDIT: Tom Hanson, The Canadian Press
In a sign that life -- and the game -- must go on, members of the RCMP detachment in Mayerthorpe, Alta., went ahead with a previously planned fundraiser hockey game last night. Before the game began, the police officers observed a moment of silence for their four comrades who were gunned down on Thursday.

Canada's top police officer said yesterday that he was too quick to condemn a marijuana grow operation as the root cause in the deaths of four Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers last week.

RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli said in an interview that his condemnation of grow-ops just hours after the shootings may have been inappropriate because police and politicians did not have full details of the particular case and the background of the killer.

Commissioner Zaccardelli and Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan, his political boss as the minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, spoke of the scourge of marijuana grow operations within hours of the killings and the need for tougher penalties for those who operate them.

"I gave what I believed was the best information I had knowing full well that at that time I didn't have all the information," a contrite Commissioner Zaccardelli said. "Clearly, there's a lot of things in there that, in hindsight, we will have to look at in a different perspective."

Police in Mayerthorpe, Alta., first attended James Roszko's home last Wednesday with a court order to seize stolen auto parts. While there, they discovered what a search warrant said were 20 "mature" marijuana plants, "several pots containing dirt with stems coming out of them numbering close to 100," and a smell "consistent of a marijuana grow operation." They returned the next day -- the day of the killings -- with a warrant to search for the drug outfit and seized 280 plants, $8,000 worth of growing equipment and a generator worth $30,000, the Edmonton Journal reported.

But now it appears the murders were the work of a deranged man with a long criminal history and a grudge against police, and not that of a gangster protecting his cash crop.

"None of these are simple issues. This requires some reflection and discussion," Commissioner Zaccardelli said. "Let's honour the memory of these four fallen police officers and help their families get through it, and then we need to carry on the debate after this."

Commissioner Zaccardelli's comments followed statements in the House of Commons yesterday by all four political parties commemorating the deaths of constables Peter Schiemann, 25, Anthony Gordon, 28, Brock Myrol, 29, and Lionide Johnston, 32.

Opposition parties declined out of respect for the four dead officers to use yesterday's question period to probe the initial reactions of Commissioner Zaccardelli and Ms. McLellan.

Last Thursday night, Ms. McLellan said the officers "were killed in an operation involving, as far as we know at this point, an illegal grow operation."

She went on to speak of the great danger grow-ops pose to police officers, their frequent links to organized crime, and the need for stronger penalties for those who run them. All are positions she has held consistently for a long time.

Ms. McLellan would not discuss Commissioner Zaccardelli's comments yesterday.

"The first thing that happened was that everybody acted based on a lack of information," said Randy White, a tough-on-crime Conservative MP from British Columbia. "Yeah, they did react, but based on information they didn't have."

Prime Minister Paul Martin, Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson, Ms. McLellan and Commissioner Zaccardelli will travel to Edmonton on Thursday for a national memorial service. Following that, Commissioner Zaccardelli said, he will be making a "more extensive" public statement on the killings.

All four political parties spoke yesterday in the House of Commons in honour of the four dead officers.

Ms. McLellan, an MP from Edmonton Centre, southeast of where the killings took place, said she was personally shaken by the incident because it occurred in her home province.

"These four officers served their community," she said, "but they were also part of their community."

There were hints that Ms. McLellan and the country's national police force could come under heavy scrutiny in coming days.

"All Canadians are asking why. Those answers will have to wait for another day," said NDP leader Jack Layton.

"The time is coming to understand the implications of their deaths and the public policy involved," said Conservative leader Stephen Harper.

Politically, it appears the federal gun registry could bear the brunt of the fallout in the days to come. Mr. Roszko had a long criminal record and should not have had access to weapons.

There have also been questions raised about the level of training and preparation given to the officers guarding Mr. Roszko's property.

A bill to reform laws governing use and cultivation of marijuana is currently under parliamentary review. It would increase penalties for those who grow the drug, but proposed decriminalizing possession of small amounts.

More Inside: Killer stalked town's police officers, page A5
© The Ottawa Citizen 2005

http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawaciti ... d1db21a5a0
[ This Message was edited by: Hamiltonf on 2005-03-08 19:51 ]

[Anonymous]

Well, we know Roszko at the age of 16 was turned in to the RCMP by his father.  Now what kind of father would do that?  

A self righteous one.  

Think about it.

[Antigen]

On 2005-03-08 19:49:00, Hamiltonf wrote:

"I was too quick to blame deaths on drugs, RCMP chief admits

Zaccardelli says he condemned grow-ops without knowing full story of ill-fated raid on farm

I'm jealous.

Religions are all alike; founded upon fables and mythologies.
--Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat

[Hamiltonf]

I think it was the drug warriors who were the quickest to jump.  I heartily agree with what Allan Young has to say:

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n408/a10.html?999

SPOTLIGHT ON GROW-OPS MISPLACED, LAWYER SAYS

From the first word of the fatal shootings of four RCMP officers in rural Alberta last week, the spotlight was turned on marijuana grow-ops -- the dangers they posed, the tougher laws needed to combat them.

Within hours, politicians, police, pot activists and even the father of killer James Roszko pointed both to marijuana itself and the illegal trade in the drug as major players in the deadly chain of events.

RCMP officials said from the outset that their men were killed in a grow-op raid.  William Roszko said his son was never the same after he started smoking "that crazy dope" as a teenager.  The Marijuana Party said the shootings underscored the need to legalize pot and wipe out the black market.

Police and some politicians argued just the opposite, saying the tragedy proved that any move to legalize weed was madness.

It now appears the focus on grow-ups was misplaced.

"It was shameful and disrespectful both on the side of the state and on the side of the activists, who felt they had to respond to the state," said Alan Young, a lawyer and longtime proponent of legalizing marijuana.

"Four police officers were dead and it was alarming to see it turn into a propaganda play right off the bat.  There is really nothing about this case that should cause someone to develop public policy one way or the other.  This case is about how to deal with psychopathic people who have long histories with the law."

Young isn't alone in his distaste.  Letters to newspapers and callers to TV and radio shows buzzed Monday along similar lines.

In a letter to the Edmonton Journal, a reader scoffed at Premier Ralph Klein's appeal to the federal government to drop any plans to decriminalize marijuana in the wake of the incident.

"This idiot would have killed over a littering ticket," Allan Wood wrote, referring to Roszko.  "For Klein to push his agenda on pot this way is ridiculous."

A caller to CBC Newsworld echoed that sentiment: "The issue is about a crazy guy with a gun," he said