The interest of the Canadian cannabis community is to defeat Conservative party candidates.

We recommend that voters look at the past results in their own riding, which can be learned by using the Voter Information Service search engines provided by Elections Canada’s website. Clicking on the last tab of information on any particular electoral district provides the results from the past few elections. Voters could judge which alternative party is most likely to be able to defeat the Conservative in their particular riding. In most cases that means voting for the Liberal party, or the Bloc Québécois within the province of Quebec, while, in some cases, the best strategic vote to defeat the Conservatives is to vote for the New Democratic Party. We want people to use their vote strategically, to try to defeat the Conservatives, by voting for whomever could defeat them, in any given particular electoral district.

Of course, strategic voting usually sucks, but the alternative is far worse. Therefore, we do not want people to vote for the Marijuana Party. (We are only running candidates in a few ridings, and so the vast majority of Canadians will not have a Marijuana Party candidate on their ballots anyway.)

The Marijuana Party was built on the idea that cannabis should not be criminal.

However, the Conservative party wants to criminalize cannabis even more!

Since 2005, the Harper government has been attempting to enact mandatory minimum jail sentences for cannabis “crimes” that only exist because of the huge lies about “reefer madness” that demonized marijuana. Their previous bills C-26, C-15, and S-10 would have imposed those kinds of penalties. Those three bills all came very close to becoming law, before elections or prorogation saved us at the last moment. Criminologists estimate that those kinds of mandatory jail sentences for cannabis “crimes” would result in about 3,000 more Canadians per year being in jail, which would cost the taxpayers billions of dollars per year. The only way to stop that from eventually happening is to defeat the Conservatives, or, at least, to stop the Conservatives from winning a majority!

Blair T. Longley is the leader of the Marijuana Party.