B.C. municipal leaders, including Parksville Mayor Chris Burger, joined the call to decriminalization marijuana at this week’s Union of B.C. Municipalities convention.
“There was 30 or 40 minutes of debate and roughly two thirds, a healthy majority, voted in favour,” reported Parksville mayor Chris Burger Wednesday from Victoria.
“Right now Victoria is on political overdrive,” he said of the 1,500 municipal delegates who hope to power through more than 200 resolutions while a couple big ones get all the attention.
All of Parksville’s city councillors made it to this year’s conference — they don’t have any of their own resolutions on the agenda, but many they say pique their interest.
The decriminalization motion, put forward by Metchosin, said prohibition is a “failed policy which has cost millions of dollars in police, court, jail and social costs,” and calls for the “appropriate government to decriminalize marijuana and research the regulation and taxation of marijuana.”
“The debate was oriented toward the eventual legalization,” Burger said, pointing out that it is a federal issue.
He previously said “The war on drugs isn’t effective,” and that municipalities are particularly interested in the taxation possibilities.
Burger said other issues of interest include a unanimous resolution asking for provincial and federal governments to provide more stable, predictable, long-term funding for infrastructure and sustainability objectives, to move away from the “one-off cheque presentations.”
Similarly, a resolution against cuts to coast guard stations passed easily.
