WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO GOOD, OLD-FASHIONED PROTESTS?

The Cannibus comes to Kelowna today, trailing memories of Ronald Reagan and
aimed in the direction of new drug laws.

But the Gipper's ghost still haunts North America, his whisperings to Just
Say No still exerting a powerful hold on our collective psyche.

Even hardcore potheads feel a little guilty and shameful when they smoke
the demon weed. They must, anyway, because you don't see them having the
guts to light up in public.

Instead, they sneak out of bars and huddle in dark back alleys. They toke
away in the privacy of their own home. Even candidates for the Marijuana
Party of B.C. get all indignant and tell you it's none of your business
when you ask how much pot they smoke. Cowards!

If they had the courage of their convictions, they wouldn't be so evasive.
Doobie in hand, they'd march up to the front steps of the nearest police
station or courthouse and defy the authorities to lay charges.

That's how protest movements with guts exposed the hypocrisy and injustice
of oppressive laws and managed to win enough public support to bring about
the changes they were after.

American civil rights campaigners in the '60s faced down water cannons and
got bonked by police billyclubs. Some of them died. Courts eventually ruled
segregation and official discrimination were unconstitutional.

In the '70s and '80s, Canadian abortionist Dr. Henry Morgentaler went about
his business in open defiance of laws against the practice. Juries refused
to convict him, and Parliament eventually changed the laws to better
reflect public opinion.

The Marijuana Party of B.C., founded just four months ago, sees itself as a
new force in the grand tradition of protest movements. The potheads say
they can make many compelling arguments as to why marijuana should be
decriminalized:

No serious physical or psychological effects have ever been conclusively
linked to pot use; the war on drugs has been a costly failure; prohibition
against marijuana will eventually be abandoned; taxing pot production and
distribution would yield billions in new revenue to fund health care and
education.

But these are just words, words that the pro-pot people have been saying
for years. Rhetoric alone never won any revolution.

What's needed, I humbly suggest, is some action.

The potheads will have to rouse themselves from their stupor and head to
the barricades.

Now, I'm certainly not advocating violence, only peaceful but illegal
theatrics that draw media interest and thus generate public debate. The
Marijuana Party of B.C., new though it is, has shown itself adept at
recognizing a good photo op and creating a news angle for editors.

Consider their campaign vehicle, nicknamed the Cannibus, which rolls into
Kelowna today. It's actually the same bus used by Ronald Reagan in 1983
when he stumped around America preaching a tax-fearing, God-loving,
drug-hating future.

It was donated to the Marijuana Party for the duration of the campaign by
its current owner, an American who's sympathetic to the party's goals.

Party Leader Brian Taylor and the Cannibus will be in Peachland at the
Edgewater Inn around 4 p.m., then they'll drive around Kelowna in the early
evening. A pro-pot rally will take place tomorrow at 1 p.m. at the Sails
next to Kerry Park, hub of the city's not so clandestine drug trade.

To casual passers-by, tomorrow's rally will probably have the look and
sound of a regular political gathering, with speeches and pamphleteers and
loudspeakers. And that's a problem.

There are worrisome signs the Marijuana Party is beginning to take itself
too seriously.

For some bizarre reason, they've felt the need to develop party positions
on issues such as agriculture, forestry and education. If I wanted to know
what a marginal, no-hope party thought about these things, I'd read the NDP
campaign brochure.

By speaking out on issues they know nothing about, the Marijuana Party
appears to be ashamed of what it really is: a perfectly respectable, single
issue protest party.

They should rejoice in their narrow vision and throw their full effort
toward generating debate on marijuana laws. And the best way they could do
that is to have each and every one of their 79 candidates arrested during
the campaign.

Grow it openly, sell it openly, smoke it openly - do whatever's necessary
to goad the police into laying charges. The image of an entire political
party being led into court would be a powerful one.

It might help move the debate over marijuana's legalization from newspaper
opinion pages to the real world, where it's discussed in family living
rooms and around kitchen tables.

Until that happens, real politicians have little reason to pay attention.
And no reason at all to take action.