A 15-year old girl was strip-searched by school officials, recently, for allegedly carrying cannabis.

This happened. In Quebec.

If you need more evidence that our cannabis laws are out of sync with current scientific knowledge on the harms and consequences of cannabis use, look no further.

Or you can look here:

”The toxicological margin of exposure [the ratio between toxicological threshold and estimated human intake] approach validates epidemiological and social science-based drug ranking approaches especially in regard to the positions of alcohol and tobacco (high risk) and cannabis (low risk).”

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4311234/

In other words, what we already know: alcohol is considerably more harmful than cannabis to users.

Does anyone doubt that the experience of being strip-searched at school – however ”respectfully” – could be more humiliating and ultimately harmful than the use of cannabis?

Bad laws hurt good people.

Photo by JonRichfield / CC BY-SA 3.0 / modified from original

Craig Jones
Craig Jones is the retired executive director of Canada’s oldest drug policy reform NGO, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in Canada (NORML.CA), and former executive director of Canada’s oldest prison reform NGO, the John Howard Society of Canada. He holds a doctorate in political economy from Queen’s University’s Department of Political Studies.

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