Thousands of pot smokers gather in Vancouver to celebrate "420"

News story from Vancouver Sun.

Thousands of marijuana smokers gather in Vancouver to celebrate "420"

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Thousands+marijuana+smokers+gather+Vancouver+celebrate/1515882/story.html

April Twentieth, “420” aka National Pot Smoking day! T’is the day where pot smokers or marijuana smokers can joyously smoke up in public around the Vancouver Art Gallery. It was originally meant as a protest movement organized to gain momentum towards legalization of the drug in Vancouver but has become almost like a “burning man” movement.

Like the “burning man” event whose original purpose was to have radical self expression and self reliance by burning a wooden effigy but have became regulated and limited,  “420” day has lost its meaning and original direction and instead become a misrepresentation.
Youths from 18 to 25 years old gather at the event to smoke up and vendors are selling stickers that say, "Legalize, Regulate, Educate, Medicate." Yet probably only a few of the youths who attend the event go on to organize or join any political movement to persuade the legalization of marijuana. Nevertheless, with the recent jump in gang killings in Vancouver, this movement hopefully will re-open the ongoing debate among authorities and civic societies. Will legalizing drugs in fact reduce crime?
Proponents of legalizing marijuana always cite Amsterdam as the drug capital of the western world and how with its legalized drugs, there are data that support the view that they do not have any increased drug addicts in their population. On the other hand, Amsterdam police force size have been reported to be proportionately larger than western cities of equal size simply because a large portion of the crimes committed in Amsterdam are from drug addicts (http://www.druglibrary.org/SCHAFFER/debate/myths/myths4.htm, para 9).
So who is right? We cannot say and unless some national body decides to do a Nation wide experiment with strict controls, we will not be able to answer decisively. What I can say for sure is that even if the conservatives got their way and attempt to clamp down hard on the drug users and dealers, with limited police numbers, regulations that has loopholes so large you can fly an Airbus 380 through as well as no support for drug offenders, we can be certain that drug use will continue to be prevalent in Canada.