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Jodie wants to:

• Make our streets and communities safe
• Build a strong, sustainable economy
• Ensure every vote counts

BC Green Party platform

Click here to see the BC Green Book

The Green Party has a better plan to govern our province and we need your support to make it happen. The old politics of the NDP and Liberals are responsible for the social and economic problems we now face. Fortunately, there are other ideas.

The Greens have gathered solutions from you, the people of BC. Individual citizens, community groups, businesses, and First Nations peoples have helped us put together a better plan for our province. This plan is your voice and ensures you regain a say in governing this province. It includes measures to invest in a new green economy, improve healthcare, build affordable housing, and care for our families and neighbours.

Our plan is all about solutions – solutions that will allow us to flourish for generations. With your support, we can work together for a prosperous future. With your support, we can build a better BC.

How Do We End The Gang Violence?

End Prohibition!

Gang Violence is caused by Drug Prohibition.

If we end drug prohibition, we will end gang violence.

Alcohol prohibition in the 1920s did not reduce the demand or supply of alcohol, but it did result in organized crime and gangsters being in total control of the production, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages.

As alcohol prohibition was more strictly enforced, and law enforcement increased, the stakes for criminals got higher. Rivals shot at and killed each other in turf wars, trying to control the market and their main source of financial income. Law enforcement was completely unable to stop the increasingly violent gangs and illegal alcohol production. The problems only got worse.

The same thing is happening today with drug prohibition. Gangs are in control of the production, distribution and sale of those drugs, and settle disputes through violence because they can’t go to police or courts for legal recourse.

Sending more gang members to jail will not stop the gang violence. Gangs control other inmates in jail, so established gang members have nothing to fear from being in prison. Prisoners are often recruited into gangs while behind bars, and remain involved in criminal activity when released. More imprisonment actually increases membership in gangs.

No one is being murdered or shot over alcohol, tobacco, coffee or prescription drugs, even though those substances can be more addictive and dangerous than some illegal drugs.

We need to remove criminal control over the drug market. Marijuana and other prohibited drugs need to be regulated, taxed, and monitored for safety. It’s time to stop the gangs. It’s time to end prohibition.

According to “Law Enforcement Against Prohibition”, prohibition:

• Wastes enormous sums of public money that could be much better used for health support and education

• Prevents honest, fact-based drug education and research and alienates youth from police

• Maintains a high crime rate for the rest of society and perpetuates corruption among government and law enforcement agencies

• Presents a supply monopoly to the criminal organizations with high levels of illegal profits

• Criminalizes individuals who choose to commit acts in private at no threat to others with a loss of future contribution to society

• Brings other laws into disrepute through the illogicality and mass disdain of drug prohibition

• Forces users of less harmful drugs to come into contact with more dangerous and addictive drugs, and ensures that hard drug users will continue to overdose and die because of a lack of testing and a clean, safe supply

- Source: www.LEAP.cc -- “Law Enforcement Against Prohibition”

Ending prohibition and introducing a legal, taxed and regulated system of production and distribution will be beneficial in the following ways:

• Millions of dollars will be transfered from the criminal underground economy to the legitimate economy, and used to build hospitals, schools, transit, and housing

• Millions of dollars will be saved in law enforcement costs. Police officers’ workloads will be reprioritized to target theft, fraud, and dangerous, violent or predatory crimes

• Children will no longer be able to buy drugs with the ease they have today – it’s harder for young people to access tobacco and alcohol than illegal drugs, so a legal system of drug control will reduce usage among teenagers

• Gangs will no longer control enormous sums of money from drug sales, and will suffer greatly from the loss of their main financial income just as the repeal of alcohol prohibition drastically impacted gangsters’ livelihoods and reduced their influence

• Users and addicts of harder drugs won’t have to buy tainted or deadly substances from street dealers when they can get the drugs from trained and registered health practitioners

These are just some of the reasons we must end prohibition for the safety, health, and overall stability of our communities!

If you want more information about why drug prohibition has failed, and to read what research and experts have found, please visit these websites:

www.BeyondProhibition.org
www.WhyProhibition.ca
www.CannabisFacts.ca
www.SenateReport.ca
www.DrugPolicy.org
www.Safety1st.org
www.NORML.ca
www.LEAP.cc

The 10 Green Principles

British Columbia's Green Party, like most Green parties around the world, filter decisions on policy direction through a set of ten principles. These ten principles are the basics of what we believe make good decisions, good government, and good living. Jodie strongly supports the 10 Green Principles.

1. Sustainability: This is really the heart of British Columbia's Green Party thinking. We must consider the welfare of our descendants, for at least seven generations, if we are to be wise stewards of the earth.

2. Social Justice: The worldwide increase in poverty and inequity is unacceptable. All must be able to fulfill their potential regardless of gender, race, citizenship, or sexual identity.

3. Grass Roots Democracy: Every human being deserves a say in the decisions that affect their lives and not be subject to the will of another. We will work to increase public participation at every level by directly including citizens in decision-making processes.

4. Non-Violence: We all know in this complicated world there are times when we may be called to arms, but we will maintain that violence is almost always self-defeating, and always the very, very last choice. We must work to end war, and eliminate the root causes of crime.

5. Community Based Economy: Rather than people being subservient to the economy, the economy should provide for human needs within the natural limits of the earth. Local self-reliance to the greatest practical extent is the best way to achieve this goal.

6. Gender Equality: The ethics of cooperation and understanding must replace the values of domination and control.

7. Diversity: We celebrate the biological diversity of the earth and the cultural, sexual, and spiritual diversity of the human race.

8. Decentralization: The people most affected by a problem must have the authority to solve it. Distant administrations cannot be responsive. Power must be returned to local communities.

9. Personal and Global Responsibility: Global sustainability and international justice can only be achieved when responsibility is shared at all levels of society.

10. Ecological Wisdom: The earth sustains all life forms. Whatever we do to the earth we do to ourselves.