FINAL REPORT: CANNABIS: OUR POSITION FOR A CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY

Conclusions and recommendations

The Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs’ mandate was to examine Canada’s public policy approach in relation to cannabis and assess its effectiveness and impact in light of the knowledge of the social and health-related effects of cannabis and the international context. Over the past two years, the Committee has heard from Canadian and foreign experts and reviewed an enormous amount of scientific research. The Committee has endeavoured to take the pulse of Canadian public opinion and attitudes and to consider the guiding principles that are likely to shape public policy on illegal drugs, particularly cannabis. Our report has attempted to provide an update on the state of knowledge and the key issues, and sets out a number of conclusions in each chapter.

This final section sets out the main conclusions drawn from all this information and presents the resulting recommendations derived from the thesis we have developed namely: in a free and democratic society, which recognizes fundamentally but not exclusively the rule of law as the source of normative rules and in which government must promote autonomy as far as possible and therefore make only sparing use of the instruments of constraint, public policy on psychoactive substances must be structured around guiding principles respecting the life, health, security and rights and freedoms of individuals, who, naturally and legitimately, seek their own well-being and development and can recognize the presence, difference and equality of others.

http://parl.gc.ca/common/Committee_SenRep.asp?Language=E&Parl=37&Ses=1&comm_id=85