A BREATH OF FRESH AIR IN POT DEBATE

ALAN YOUNG is, as law professors go, a gold-plated hoot. He's engaging,
erudite, as apt to quote Baudelaire as constitutional texts. He's, by his
own admission, a bit of a troublemaker. Not least of all, Young is the hero
of Canadian potheads from sea to sea to shimmering lemon meringue pie.

Yesterday, he testified before a Senate special committee on illegal drugs,
a panel charged most particularly with considering Canada's current
marijuana laws. That he followed Toronto police Chief Julian Fantino to the
mike suggests at least someone in the employ of our chamber of sober second
thought tends a little to the giddy side.

Oscar and Felix made no odder a couple than Fantino and Young. No sooner
had the chief grimly delivered the law-and-order view, than the law prof
dismissed it as yet more Reefer Madness hysteria.

"Marijuana has never, in the entire recorded history of mankind, caused a
death directly," he said. "You can kill rats with sugar and caffeine. You
can't kill them with marijuana."

Research shows there's no higher incidence of cognitive impairment among
pot smokers than the general population, he said. And there's greater
hospitalization for complications arising from use of ASA than from use of
marijuana.

It's "one of the most benign substances on this planet," he said. The only
harm seen is in chronic users, who represent less than one per cent of
marijuana consumers.

"So I say the criminal law in this country is being used to protect us from
becoming a nation of coughers and wheezers. That's not a function of
criminal justice.

"If good health and the promotion of good health was a criminal justice
priority, I propose a new section banning the sale of oily potato chips."

"Or perhaps sales of liquor should be prohibited. That's when, senators,
you'd hear people start talking about civil liberties. . . . I say it's a
liberty issue to choose your intoxicant, as long as it doesn't hurt other
people."

Studies show a quarter of us are afraid to walk our neighbourhoods at
night, he said, "and it's not because of pot smokers. . . . If you spent
five minutes with a marijuana smoker, you know they'd never be able to rob
banks. They can't get it together."

Still, fortunes are spent applying criminal sanction to those engaged in
relatively harmless conduct. In this, North America is out of step with the
rest of the Western world. And one of the pressures on Canada to retain the
status quo is, he suspects, in order to remain in sync with the
zero-tolerance U. S. of A. "It's really interesting that when they pulled
out of Cambodia, that's when Nixon first declared the war on drugs. They
have to have a war. That's the American phenomenon. So they're not going to
let us make fun of their war."

In fact, youth consumption rates are lower in countries with looser laws,
he said.

In Canada, the rate of young people using marijuana has ranged from a low
of about 17 per cent during the "just-say-no" era of Nancy Reagan to about
30 per cent.

"In Holland, where you can walk down the street, go into a cafe, get a
cappuccino and a joint, it's only around 9 per cent. That's the only thing
you need to know about the European experience. You open the gates, people
aren't rushing in to get high. . . . (For young people), if it's not
against the law, there's nothing to rebel against."

As for the Baudelaire, the poet evidently had this to say about hashish in
the 1850s: "Take a spoonful, happiness is yours. . . . Take it. Have no
fear. You will not die of it. Your internal organs will not be harmed.

"It may, perhaps, weaken your resolve."