STRAIGHT DOPE

Premier Ralph Klein has smoked a little weed in his time. Not his thing,
mind you, but he thinks it's time to reconsider the marijuana laws just the
same.

Federal Justice Minister Anne McLellan says she's ready to entertain
discussions about cannabis.

An editorial in the last Canadian Medical Association Journal calls for
decriminalization, noting that "400,000 Canadians use cannabis for medical
reasons," that the risk of addiction is "very weak (and perhaps
nonexistent)", and that "the minimal negative health effects of moderate use
would be attested to by the estimated 1.5 million Canadians who smoke
marijuana for recreational purposes."

And 47 per cent of Canadians in a recent survey said that they wanted to see
marijuana legalized.

Is it time to lay off the pot?

Not according to the Canadian Police Association. On Monday, the CPA
presented a brief to a Senate special committee studying drug laws. The
organization has also made available on its web site a list of the "Top Ten
Myths" about illicit drugs and enforcement. The association denies, for
instance, that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco, that
drug laws cause more harm than the drugs themselves and that police support
the status quo out of fear for their jobs.

Regarding its assertion that dope carries greater risk, the CPA claims that
tobacco doesn't impair consciousness or "brainpower." "The same may be
said," the document adds, "for alcohol when taken in moderation." But, the
CPA claims, "There is no such thing as safe use of illicit drugs, including
marijuana."

Bruce Alexander disagrees. "It is, of course, false. Everybody knows it's
false," says the Simon Fraser University professor of psychology. "These
assertions that they're making don't bear consideration. All this research
has been done long ago. Their job is to repeat nonsense. There are serious
issues concerning marijuana, but all I can say about statements like that is
=8Cignore them' because they're not worth debating."

Eugene Oscapella is an Ottawa lawyer and former chairman of the Drug Policy
Group or the Law Reform Commission of Canada. He also takes issue with dire
warnings about pot. "Tobacco only kills 40,000 people per year, so I guess
cannabis must be much more dangerous," he laughs. "I read the brief. I was
at that committee hearing yesterday. Frankly, it looked like they'd taken a
page out of the U.S. government propaganda sheet. I was quite appalled at
the lack of scientific rigor in their presentation. Unfortunately, some
people are going to believe them because they're police officers. What they
were doing was advocating for their own personal ideology, but the science
behind their advocacy was totally flawed. It was a totally irresponsible
presentation, I thought."

Opponents of legalization point to the danger of dependency. So what risk is
there of developing an addiction to dope?

"The question of addiction has nothing to do with drugs, says Alexander.
"People get just as addicted to video games as they do to drugs," a
situation that Alexander attributes to social rather than pharmacological or
individual factors. "I rather suppose that it's much more the case that
we're in a particular phase of social decline where lots and lots of people
get addicted. You could almost say that if there is a defining malaise of
our declining society it could be addiction in combination with depression.
Those two things always go together."

Asked what support there is for the notion that marijuana is a "gateway
drug" that leads to use of drugs with more serious health effects, Alexander
is unequivocal: "None. You can discuss it endlessly, but it's been resolved
for 40 or 50 years."

If cannabis is as innocuous as Alexander, Oscapella and the CMAJ editorial
claim, why does it have so many detractors? Quite apart from its history of
vilification, Oscapella says that many benefit from enforcement of laws that
limit use.

"The police say that they don't profit from prohibition. Well, tell that to
the thousand RCMP officers who are employed full time doing drug law
enforcement. They pay their mortgages that way. So do lawyers, so do prison
builders. There's a huge private prison-building industry in the U.S. that's
seeping into Canada. The most obvious beneficiary is organized crime, but
there are many other "legitimate" players who profit immensely."

Others view the drug as a competitor. "The pharmaceutical companies benefit
by having access to some products restricted: it gives their products
greater prominence," says Oscapella. "If a pharmaceutical company sells an
anti-nausea drug that costs a thousand dollars a month, it's probably not
going to be too happy if someone can get the same benefit out of medical
marijuana, which can be grown for the price of tomatoes."

Oscapella urges skepticism: "A lot of people who advocate prohibition
because it's good for society also benefit directly from prohibition."

He tempers his remarks. "I'm not saying that all police officers who support
prohibition support it because they benefit from it. Some honestly believe
it's the best way to go. I would try to persuade them otherwise."

Det. Glen Hayden would need persuading. A member of the Drug Control Section
of the Edmonton Police Service, he was a member of the police association
group who made the presentation in Ottawa. He strenuously challenges the
notion that police benefit from enforcement. In fact, he argues,
legalization would make more work for police.

"Our projection is that this is going to cause an overwhelming multitude of
crimes, including impaired driving."

Nonetheless, the serious health effects of legal drugs are undeniable. A
paper published last year in CMAJ, assessing figures from 1995, determined
that alcohol was responsible for 4,685 deaths in Canada, making it the cause
of 4.2 per cent of deaths in the nation. Tobacco was responsible for 23,352
deaths, 21 per cent of the total. All illicit drugs accounted for 691 deaths
or 0.6 per cent. The first number includes 129 deaths by opiate poisoning,
66 deaths due to AIDS (associated with injection drug use) and other causes
that aren't easily attributed to marijuana.

Clearly the health effects of tobacco and alcohol are grave. Nevertheless,
people can choose to use them legally. Shouldn't they be allowed to make the
same choice regarding cannabis? Det. Hayden says that legalizing marijuana
just makes a bad situation worse. "We already have two drugs that we're
battling to get away from as well as the adult population. Why on earth =AD
and I'm speaking as a parent and a police office and a member of the
community =AD why on earth would we throw a third one in there?"

So should the CPA be promoting restrictions on the use of tobacco and
alcohol? Hayden believes that it would now be impossible arrange such
restrictions.

These arguments don't impress Oscapella. He contends the rules for marijuana
should be the same as for legal drugs and should place the onus on the
individual. "Nobody who advocates changing the laws recommends driving under
the influence of marijuana," he says. "That's a question of teaching basic
civic responsibility: you don't go to work drunk, you don't go to work
stoned, you don't drive when your attention is impaired by lack of sleep, by
the flu.

"This is a substance that a very significant portion of the Canadian
population has used, the vast majority without harmful effects. If cannabis
were that dangerous, we'd have millions of people suffering these terrible
consequences that the Canadian Police Association says and I'm sorry, we
just don't see that."

As far as legalization is concerned, Alexander urges caution. "Obviously
marijuana prohibition is bad. Everybody recognizes that. But where do we go
from there. Now that's quite difficult.

"We in sort of a mire here where there are all these marijuana advocates who
are saying legalize, legalize, legalize. I'm afraid we may go from stupid
prohibition to stupid legalization. Which I think would be a big mistake,
because there are lots of people who don't like marijuana for real reasons,
not bullshit reasons like the chiefs of police [have]. Like it violates
their sense of right and wrong.

"The hypocrisy [of the current situation] is galling, but we've got to move
intelligently not stupidly."