PETERS – Decriminalization is a big paradigm shift — but a much more subtle change in practice

THE DECISION TO DECRIMINALIZE POSSESSION of small amounts of hard drugs shouldn’t be seen as either the end of the world, nor the magic bullet that will finally bring the toxic drug crisis under control.

Instead, it’s a major paradigm shift many of us will have to wrap our heads around that will ultimately result in fairly minor change.

A few generations ago, the easiest way to get kids to internalize the danger of drugs was to tell them they were illegal.

It took a lot of pressure off of the adults explaining why kids shouldn’t do drugs — or why drugs are significantly different than much more commonly used substances like alcohol and tobacco.

Hard drugs like heroin and meth were illegal. The government told us they were bad and that was it. Beer and smokes were legal.

Read More >>

James Peters is the radio anchor at CFJC, coming to Kamloops in 2006. He anchors the afternoon news on B-100 and 98.3 CIFM, and contributes weekly editorials to the CFJC Evening News. He tweets regularly @Jamloops.