If the Sensible B.C. campaign collects over 400,000 signatures from across the province, the group says there will be a referendum in British Columbia to decriminalize marijuana possession in 2014

A group called Sensible BC is working to decriminalize the simple possession of cannabis in British Columbia through a proposal called the Sensible Policing Act. The Sensible Policing Act would amend the Police Act, to redirect all police in the province from taking any action, including searches, seizures, citations or arrests, in cases of simple cannabis possession by adults. This would apply to all RCMP and municipal police in BC.

Sensible BC began collecting signatures on September 9, 2013, with a goal of collecting over 400,000 signatures from all across British Columbia between September 9 and December 5, in order to force a BC referendum to decriminalize marijuana possession in 2014.

Vancouver Sun reporter Barbara Yaffe says the group has a good chance of forcing a province-wide referendum:

Governments had better take note because B.C. is place where people power packs a punch, where a 2011 referendum campaign killed the Harmonized Sales Tax. It’s also the location of Insite, the first supervised injection centre in Canada, which is broadly supported by an open-minded, caring community.

It’s not a long shot to imagine that British Columbians, fed up with the side-effects of an illegal and untaxed pot industry, would vote to support regulation of cannabis cultivation, distribution and use. –Vancouver Sun, June 21, 2013

An Angus-Reid survey, released in April 2013 by the lobby group Stop the Violence B.C., shows that British Columbians overwhelmingly support a pilot study to evaluate the legalization of cannabis for adults (Source: Edmonton Journal). But since the Conservatives took national office in 2006, “arrests for pot possession [across the country] have jumped 41 per cent. In those six years, police reported more than 405,000 marijuana-related arrests, roughly equivalent to the populations of Regina and Saskatoon combined” (Source: Maclean’s).

A December 2011 report by Stop the Violence BC, entitled How not to protect community health and safety: What the government’s own data say about the effects of cannabis prohibition, advocates for a strict regulatory framework and public health approach to legal cannabis sales, using 20 years of data collected by surveillance systems funded by the Canadian and U.S. governments to highlight the failure of cannabis prohibition in North America:

“If you look at the data that governments themselves have collected, it is clear beyond a reasonable doubt that marijuana prohibition has failed to achieve its intended objectives and has actually contributed to a range of serious unintended consequences in terms of organized crime and gang violence,” said Dr. Evan Wood, a physician and founder of Stop the Violence BC.

Added Dr. John Carsley, a medical health officer based in Vancouver: “From a scientific and public health perspective, we urgently need to pursue alternatives to the blanket prohibition of marijuana which are based on evidence. Strict regulation, guided by a public health framework, is clearly the logical way forward.”

We speak with Sensible BC organizer and activist Amanda Orum.

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Global News: Dana Larsen speaks about Sensible BC (July 14, 2013)