Four Victims in Alberta

Several people have passed on articles to me about the tragic killing of four RMCP officers by a maniac who had a marijuana grow-op and ended up killing himself.
There have been a number of good discussions about this around the web. The best I’ve seen so far is this article in the National Post of Canada: Why the War on Drugs Can Never Be Won by Jonathan Kay.

Yesterday, four police officers were killed by a pot thug in Alberta. For those who still believe the war on drugs can be won, it will be but one more reason to pound the chest and call for zero tolerance. But common sense dictates otherwise: These four men were not victims of drugs. They were victims of the war on drugs.

This is not the best time to make this point. When men in uniform — men with wives and children and mortgages — are gunned down by criminals, our first human impulse is not to question the mission of the fallen. But we must: There are many good reasons to put one’s life on the line — soldiers, firemen and even taxis drivers do it all the time in a day’s work. But the campaign against reefer, that is not one of them.

The number of people who died yesterday trying to fight the marijuana trade exceeds — by four — the total number of people known to medical science to have died from a marijuana overdose, ever. …

Four more drug war victims.