This article is full of your usual media half-truths and misinformation. In the movie "Bowling for Columbine" Michael Moore depicts the Canadian media as being more reliable than its American counterpart. I live in British Columbia and I can tell you this is far from true.

On Thursday, four officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were shot to death in Alberta, British Columbia’s neighboring province, as they were searching a marijuana-growing operation, one of many on the rise there.
This is bullshit. Those RCMP officers (we call 'em Mounties) weren't raiding a grow-op, they didn't even have any prior knowledge that a grow-op was there. They were raiding this guy's property because he was known to have several stolen trucks in his possession. Moreover, this guy was known to be a paranoid, police-hating maniac with a history of violent crime and an arsenal of weapons. The police knew this yet they broke into his house at well past midnight. Then when they get gunned down by a maniac the blame somehow is transfered to marijuana, which had nothing to do with it.

Also, if you think about this logically for a second it could be an arguement for marijuana legalization rather than against it. Had marijuana been legal this guy would've had no need to have a grow-op and the cops would not have had to raid his house (not that that was the reason anyways).

The idea that this man had a neighbourhood grow-op strikes me as smelling strongly of bullshit. The articles I have read have all quoted him as being "a figure-head of menace in the community "[I]. He was said to leave bear traps on his lawn to discourage trespassers. Do you honestly think neighbourhood teenagers would buy their pot from someone like that? Would you buy pharmaceuticals from Charles Manson?

America can tighten its strangehold on marijuana all it likes, but that will amount to nothing as it has already been proven again and again that laws controlling what someone does in their own privacy are ineffective.