MARIJUANA PARTY'S POLITICAL PLANK BLUNT

VANCOUVER -- You can smoke dope in the headquarters of the B.C. Marijuana
Party, but not tobacco.

In fact, the two guys who insisted I take my Players outdoors were sharing
a pipe of hashish at the time.

"No cigarettes," one said. "They are bad for your health and, besides, the
smell is offensive."

They were somewhat more accommodating at the members-only bistro next door.
It's called Blunt Bros., A Respectable Joint

The Blunts have created a well-ventilated smoking room at the back of the
joint -- which is, in fact, very respectable -- for smokers of all kinds.
During the day, all smoking is restricted to the smoking room. After 6
p.m., however, dope smokers are allowed to spark up in the restaurant,
which serves foods for the granola crowd at tables, couch-lined nooks and
at long, stand-up bars, the tops of which are inlaid with backgammon boards.

Anti-Tobacco Bylaw

Cigarette smokers, however, must confine their activities to the smoking
room in accordance with Vancouver's strict anti-tobacco smoking bylaw.

Directly across Hastings Street, on the sidewalk along the pocket-size
Victory Square Park, dealers, under umbrellas to keep off the drizzle, sell
pot to drivers on their way home to the 'burbs. The traffic (the
trafficking?) is constant. If the police even take notice, they don't act
on it.

I went to Hastings Street, infamous for prostitutes and drug addicts, with
Randy Caine, a Surrey candidate for the Marijuana Party, which has fielded
a full slate of 79 candidates for the May 16 B.C. election, the only fringe
party to do so.

Which is not a measure of its popularity with voters, but rather a measure
of the conviction of its members to libertarian, minimalist-government views.

A recent poll, however, showed support has grown to three per cent from one
per cent over the first three weeks of the campaign.

Caine, 47, wanted to show me how much has changed since 1993, when he was
busted for possession of a tiny amount of marijuana.

He was 39 then, a heavy equipment operator supporting two teenage daughters
and a wife, who works as a script supervisor in the film business.

He was taking a philosophy course and had gone in his van to White Rock
Beach with another student. They smoked a joint and left the roach in the
ashtray.

A police bicycle patrol came by. Cops on bikes were so new and novel that a
reporter was tagging along.

Long Hair

Caine had shoulder length hair and a mustache -- he still does -- which
perhaps explains why the police stopped their bikes and started asking
questions. Eventually, the roach was spotted in the ashtray and, what with
a reporter looking on, one thing led to another.

Soon, a bunch of cruisers arrived, lights flashing. A crowd gathered as
police tore apart the van.

Caine was sitting in the back seat of a cruiser and looked out to see a
young couple pointing at him while talking earnestly to their young,
wide-eyed son.

"I don't know what they were saying, but I can guess they were using me as
an example of the kind of person not to be.

"I did a checklist of myself. I had a loving family of 17 years, two kids,
I had always worked hard, had always been productive, never was in trouble.
And yet all of that was somehow being undone over a tiny little bit of
marijuana.

"I didn't feel guilty of all that was being suggested I ought to feel
guilty for," he said.

Caine decided that he would not allow his self-respect to be diminished by
a law he thought was wrong in its formulation and application. He decided
to fight. Given his clean record and responsible lifestyle, John Conroy,
rights lawyer and founder of the Canadian branch of National Organization
for Reform of Marijuana Laws, took up his case pro bono.

Last month, the Supreme Court of Canada decided to review Caine's case
along with two others to determine whether Parliament can jeopardize
individual liberty by criminalizing behaviour that all courts so far
involved agree is largely harmless.

"We're forcing them to decide this question: What is liberty?" Conroy said
at the time. "What is the state's interest in whether somebody smokes
marijuana, even if they could get bronchitis?"

A favourable ruling could lead to the decriminalization of marijuana,
forcing governments to restrict themselves to regulation of its use, as is
done with liquor and tobacco.

Which is what Caine sincerely hopes will happen. In fact, he hopes it is
the beginning of the end of criminalizing drug use.

The whole war on drugs, he says, has failed at tremendous cost to both
taxpayers and users, even abusers.

Much of the crime associated with drugs and addiction would cease if drug
use was brought into the open and was regulated. Kids would suddenly have
at least as much difficulty obtaining drugs as they do alcohol.

He estimates -- and let's not forget that after eight years of study he
knows whereof he speaks -- that the city in which he lives, Surrey, last
year spent about $24 million on drug law enforcement while cutting its
$7-million library budget.

Resonate

Across Canada, drug law enforcement costs about $7 billion a year, and some
40,000 of an estimated three million pot users last year were charged with
possession, he says.

These arguments increasingly resonate everywhere, but especially in British
Columbia, where the rate of pot smoking is estimated to be about 17 per
cent of the population, about twice the national average.

What goes on on Hastings Street is at once tolerated and intolerable. It is
tolerated at the Blunt Bros. and the Marijuana Party headquarters at the
trendy end of Hastings, but a few blocks further east is a wasteland that
has become a magnet for heroin addicts, who shoot up and die in the streets
and whose criminal activities have all but destroyed business activity in
nearby Chinatown.

That something other than the same old must be done is becoming
increasingly obvious to everyone, including the RCMP, which, in a
front-page story in the Vancouver Sun last week, called for a national
study toward the creation of safe injection sites where addicts get free
drugs and care.

Treatment could be a safer, more cost-affective approach than enforcement,
the chief of drug enforcement conceded.

At an all-candidates meeting in Surrey last week attended by about 30
election hopefuls, a meeting marked by tedious arguments about all the
usual issues with all the usual solutions, the only candidate to really
stand out was high-school teacher and Marijuana Party candidate David
Bourgeois.

Bourgeois spoke with passion and conviction about the need to legalize drug
use so as to better control youth access to drugs and to create money for
prevention and treatment programs.

He said the hundreds of millions of dollars that would be saved on policing
and prosecuting, the hundreds of millions more that would be gained in
taxes by bringing a multi-billion underground industry into the open, and
the billions more that could be collected in drug taxes, would do more for
government bottom lines than gambling has done, and could actually generate
the money all agree is needed for health care and education.

"We are bringing billions of new dollars to the table," he said. "They
(other parties) are bringing nothing other than what they already have
picked from your pocket."

Influence

Caine says he does not expect to win the election, but he does expect the
party's campaign will have a significant influence on thinking about drugs,
as will the Supreme Court decision expected some time this winter.

The struggle has cost him his home and his RRSPs. He now works full time as
an advocate for drug law reform -- a "harm reductionist," he says -- and
makes a bit of money as an on-call truck driver and security officer.

"But don't feel bad for me," he said. "I feel good about what I have done.
I know that because of all this, there will be a little bit more freedom
and it's just around the corner. This is a good story, not a bad one. A
happy story, not a sad one."