Words by

Bogi Bjarnason

Short and to the point is the word. Here is some common sense: With an economic deathblow being dealt to a crumbling country, keeping assets in the country is paramount. Bearing that in mind, I contend that a police force stretched severely thin is better spent on pressing matters of actual socially detrimental crime rather than non-issues like domestic cannabis growing.
Marijuana, having now thankfully evolved from an import to a self-sufficient homegrown market, harms only the user, not your average taxpayer. The herb is neither lethal nor conducive to violence or crime. All it fosters is a lack of ambition, giggling fits and a mellow, creative high. And some mad munchies.
According to news reports, 800 kilos of raw material have been seized in a series of overachieving police raids. This equals perhaps half a ton of end product at a street value of over 2.250.000 ISK, roughly, according to ridiculously inflated post raid prices. With the keeling currency and the re-emergence of smuggling, a conservative estimate of a mark up doubling wholesale to street price, for that huge batch, we’re looking at a shipping out of 1.125.000 ISK in sorely needed currency to countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands and Morocco.
The crux, however, is that the more weed seized, the more local demand is exposed, and with ever added exposure of want, the need for de-criminalization is laid bare. With a populist force of demand, although not yet fully emerging to speak their mind from out of the shroud of taboo, an outburst of indignation will at some point erupt as a response to ceaseless bullying by the narrow-minded forces that be. And when the people will take no more, the police know from bitter experience, law and order will be crushed under the heel of the masses.
Currently, 240 convicts are waiting to serve their term within the seriously over crowded Icelandic prison system, most of whom are guilty of crimes worse then herbiculture. Locking industrious green-fingered gentlemen up seems like a mindless police crusade, engineered to regain respect for a law keeping institution much maligned during the last year.
Politics are naught but a hunt to fulfil the populist stated wants and needs, yet this is not reflective of its true inner opinion. They will never admit defeat in the war on drugs. A war on drugs is, however, only a war on the human condition, and the human condition cannot be vanquished.
Hence many man-hours, endless tax payer money and column upon column of newsprint is wasted on chasing mankind’s very own tail. Whatever one’s poison, an addict as well as the casual user will fill his or her need no matter the price, making any preventive measures but an added hurdle, conducive to crime within the sphere of harder substances, rather than a social benefit.
Complete legalisation is therefore the only way and the benefits are both social and medicinal as well, regarding quality of life for thousands of casual users. This far outweighs any claims of increased abuse, claims that bear no proof by statistics from de-criminalized countries, and which, if they did, the policing expenditures saved along with the added income from taxation would no doubt comfortably finance any additional need for rehabilitation.