TAX MONEY GOES UP IN SMOKE

Ah, autumn and as kiddies head back to school, across the province from the
East Kootenays to the Gulf Islands, female pot plants are close to harvest.
Sex starved-denied pollen from male plants-their flower buds grow sticky
with resin, more potent because of their yearning.

Now that softwood lumber is on the ropes marijuana is British Columbia's
biggest export industry, according to the cops.

But this season of mellow fruitfulness is hardly tranquil. As many seeking
to spend a final quiet afternoon at the cabin in a hammock with a book will
testify, there is the cacophonous sound of helicopters on the hunt. Aside
from the urban efforts of police, each fall millions of tax dollars are
spent in their American-inspired jihad against a substance that most in
B.C. think should be legal.

It is the cost and the futility of this exercise that has drawn criticism
from the most conservative of quarters. The Fraser Institute and the
Economist magazine figure there are better ways to spend money. Yet every
Canadian police force budget bleeds copiously for this cause while other
services go wanting.

Hippies now closer to pension than puberty can only be puzzled that the war
continues. For them the debate began in the 60s and led to the 1973 Le Dain
Commission of inquiry into the non-medical use of drugs.

News clippings from that time noted that the commission found that tobacco
and alcohol were by far the most seriously abused drugs in Canada. They
still are. Yet Gordon Campbell's provincial government hesitates at
reducing the damage from second hand tobacco smoke because of the cost to
business but doesn't say a word about resources wasted on policing pot.

For decades the laws against possession and cultivation of pot have been
used as a "gateway" of sorts. They allow cops the discretion to harass,
impede or investigate folks they don't like for other reasons. Mostly kids
are victimized in this way, found with a bag of grass or a few joints. At
worst they end up with criminal records that alter their lives, their
careers, their opportunities. At best they have to put up with abuse from
folks who should have better things to do.

A cover story last month in Maclean's revisited the origins of this
travesty: "Reefer Madness-the sequel." The 1922 delusions of Edmonton
magistrate Emily Murphy in her book Black Candle claimed smoking pot would
turn us into raving maniacs. It was all the federal government apparently
needed to make pot illegal a year later.

To no one's surprise prohibition has created a remarkably successful
illicit industry hardly affected at all by police intervention. There are,
of course, powerful and violent gangs behind a fair amount of this, not
unlike what happened during the prohibition early last century.

Ingenuity abounds. The latest tactic by rural growers has them digging deep
trenches where they bury either school buses or transport trailers which
are then powered by portable generators and used as subterranean sites for
growing pot. Hydroponic equipment sellers take up two full pages in the
latest Vancouver phone book.

Now that the federal government has agreed to allow for the medical use of
marijuana, a B.C. entrepreneur has produced a little $4,000 unit you can
pop into the corner of your living room. It is fully automated, which is
something you will not be if you smoke the pound or two or pot this can
produce every six to eight weeks.

Despite ample of evidence of the lunacy of the law, nothing will change. We
will waste money on this while libraries are closed and bus schedules are
reduced for lack of funds. The American Drug Enforcement Agency which
regularly monitors and applauds the work of our local pot busting police is
opening up a full time office here. And those of us who seek one last bit
of calm as the season turns will continue to be disturbed by helicopters
shattering the air.