DON'T CALL IT REEFER MADNESS

Because libertarians never achieve political power, they have the
luxury of advancing passionately held, logically consistent theories
that will never be tested in real life.

Conservatives, who do accede to political power from time to time,
must temper theories -- especially those that make physical appetites
their touchstone -- with a view to their consequences for society.
From hard experience, conservatives understand there is many a slip
between the cup of theoretical individual liberties and the lip of
desirable social outcomes.

Like most liberals and many other conservatives, I don't believe
possession or use of marijuana should be criminalized. But unlike
most liberals and all libertarians, I don't think it should be legalized.

The Post's editorial board takes the libertarian view, agreeing it
"makes sense" to legalize what is a pleasure to many and in their
view harmful to no one.

In fact, marijuana does great harm to our most socially vulnerable
youth: aboriginals, the mentally fragile and the socially
dysfunctional. Cheaper, readily available cannabis will escalate
consumption and exacerbate well-documented harms in that population.

In my column last week, I urged the board to reconsider their stance
in the light of increasingly persuasive research that links today's
much stronger strains of cannabis with -- amongst other worrying
effects --psychosis in young people genetically predisposed to, or
already in the throes of schizophrenia.

By "reconsider" I meant the board should take time to inquire more
deeply into recent scientific findings that have prompted sober
second thoughts in other countries.

Instead the very next day the Post published a mock-the-messenger
editorial, into which more "reconsidering" was apparently lavished on
its (admittedly) witty headline -- "Barbara Kay vs. Mary Jane"-- than
on respectful attention to the message.

Casting me as an uptight, prohibition-era Miss Grundy and gleefully
dandling their presumed "gotcha," the board asked if I intended to
"don [my] bonnet" and "take up the hatchet" against the familiar
harms of legal tobacco and alcohol. To respond to their challenge:
Tobacco and marijuana are apples, alcohol is oranges.

If I'd been around when Europeans were introduced to tobacco four
centuries ago, and had known then that even moderate long-term
smoking caused lung cancer, why yes, I would have argued against its
legalization. Alas, that rusted open barn door can't be easily closed.

As for alcohol, no. Smoking in any form is harmful. Wine and spirits
in moderation confer health benefits. The great majority of social
drinkers should not be penalized for the dysfunction of the few.

From antiquity, the loving cultivation of vineyards wherever
possible, and the enjoyment of wine and spirits has been a positive
feature of all Western societies. Prohibition failed because its
imposition through a transiently ascendant wave of religious
asceticism was inconsistent with democracy and a society in which
alcohol generally played a benign role.

And because alcohol in moderation is culturally aligned with enhanced
fellowship and animated human interaction, it is therefore a communal
as well as an individual good. Conversely, the purpose of marijuana
is the alteration of consciousness, an end achieved by a process that
thrives in solitude and mental torpor.

As well, the greatly augmented proportions of the psychoactive
ingredient in today's cannabis belie the now-anachronistic defence of
cannabis' gentle effects. As one reader wrote me: "One high-potency
marijuana reefer is worse on driving reflexes than a whole bottle of
wine from my experience. Much worse."

Unlike alcohol or tobacco, the marijuana-rights lobby is linked to an
ideology and a larger agenda, in support of which a sympathetic
leftist media overlooks their obligation to cover legitimate health
concerns. Thus, even though the Post board's capitulation to the
romance of cannabis may spring from lofty libertarian principles, it
unwittingly furthers the nihilist agenda of cynical all-drug
legalizers who are exploiting marijuana's relatively innocent image
as their Trojan horse.

One mirthless irony that theory-fixated libertarians fail to consider
is that legalizing marijuana would simply divert invested criminals'
efforts into marketing stronger, illegal marijuana to minors.

Another is that for accountability and liability purposes,
legalization will embroil government, insurance companies, schools
and medicare in such a tortuous maze of regulatory and enforcement
interference with their privacy that potheads -- and libertarians --
will yearn for the paradoxical simplicity of illegal, but unencumbered access.

I have failed in my mission with the Post's editorial board. We must
henceforth agree to disagree on marijuana legalization, but I do hope
this column, as well as those I write on related issues in the future
will appeal to readers of common sense.