NiagaraThisWeek.com: Article: Hundreds rally for legalized marijuana
Honking car horns coming from vehicles as they passed a parkette near Hwy. 420 got a crowd of 200 cheering in solidarity.

With the smell of ganja in the air Sunday, people rallied to show their support for the legalization of marijuana at the 420 marijuana march, a peaceful protest aimed at showcasing the need to abolish marijuana prohibition.

With similar demonstrations in Toronto and Hamilton that same day, marijuana enthusiasts marched down Victoria Avenue and down Clifton Hill to Queen Victoria Park with their protest signs and flags held high … all while lighting up a joint in the process.

One of the supporters at the rally was Derek Pedro, who is a legalized user of marijuana. Suffering from migraine headaches, muscle spasms and joint pain, Pedro said marijuana has helped reduce his suffering.

“I need to get high to feel medicated,” Pedro said. “But everywhere I go I feel like I need to hide myself to smoke. I feel the public doesn’t understand that there are positives to marijuana use. Prohibition gives it a bad name.”

Alison Myrden, who represents the group, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a non-profit educational group whose mandate is to lower incidents of death, disease, crime and addiction through ending prohibition, has suffered from symptoms of chronic Multiple Sclerosis. The symptoms include extreme facial pain and the need to walk with a cane.

Myrden said marijuana helps get her through the pain and has reduced the number of painkillers she takes each day.

“Prohibition doesn’t work,” Myrden said. “If it was legalized, people wouldn’t be looking at the streets to find it. Something has to be done to change the laws. In my perfect world, all drugs should be legal.”

There is a sentence that will scare your average person: all drugs should be legal.  To most people, that conjures up a society gone berserk, with trippin’ space cadets, zombie junkies, thievin’ tweakers, and utter chaos in the streets.  We can’t legalize drugs, they protest, because that would encourage people to do drugs!

I’ve got news for them: drugs require no encouragement.  People are doing drugs, even though they are illegal.  The chaos in the streets is already here and most of it is a direct result of the prohibition, not the drugs.  It’s funny to me how the drug warriors see prohibition (the lack of laws controlling drugs) as a method of control and they see regulation (taxes and laws to control drugs) as a recipe for disaster.

Out drug war is based on the wrong metrics, and those are (a) how many people are using drugs and (b) how much drugs are they using?  Both measures are irrelevant.  If half of all North Americans lit up joint every day for the next month, would that be bad?  By the drug war metrics, yes.

But what would the results be from that massive smoke-in?  Are there fewer crimes?  Less drunk driving?  Fewer prescriptions for toxic pharmaceuticals?  A reduction in violence?  A windfall for snack manufacturers?  See, it’s not how many people or how much drugs that we should worry about, it’s the harm that does or does not result from the drugs.

And with marijuana, most people know that there is little societal harm, if any, from the responsible adult use of marijuana.  Even those who think marijuana is harmful believe that harm is pretty much reserved for the marijuana user, and rarely believe that it’s causing more harm than alcohol or nicotine.

Niagara Falls Review - Ontario, CA
Pro-pot activists say it’s high time the federal government legalizes marijuana.

And hundreds of those who believe Canadians should have the right to smoke up without fear of being charged took to the streets of Niagara Falls to draw attention to their cause.

“You need to legalize it,” said Marco Renda, one of the demonstrators who took part in what has come to be known as the annual Highway 420 Anti-Prohibition Rally.

“I have no problem with the government regulating it, just like they do alcohol.”

The rally, which was staged for the first time in Niagara Falls about five years ago, began around 3 p.m. on a grassy patch land on Victoria Avenue overlooking Highway 420.