CANADA'S SECOND FAILED PROHIBITION ATTEMPT

Journalist Provides Thoughtful Contribution To Marijuana Debate, Plus
Look Inside The Illegal Industry

Bud Inc.: Inside Canada's Marijuana Industry by Ian Mulgrew Random
House 304 pp., $35

Marijuana prohibitionists in Canada are facing an enemy more
formidable and insidious than Cheech and Chong movies will ever be:
simple economics.

In his bulletproof book, Bud Inc.: Inside Canada's Marijuana
Industry, Vancouver Sun reporter Ian Mulgrew examines how the
widespread demand for cannabis sativa, combined with severely limited
supply, has made the pot business among the most lucrative -- and
guaranteed -- in Canada.

In other words, the invisible hand is rolling a joint.

The numbers are heady indeed. Citing research by Stephen Easton, an
economics scholar with the right-wing Fraser Institute and a
professor at Simon Fraser University, Mulgrew says the wholesale
value of Canada's 2003 pot crop was about $5.7 billion.

In British Columbia alone, the annual harvest value is almost equal
to that province's mining and oil-and-gas sectors combined, and
bigger than the entire agricultural sector. At retail street prices
that weed is worth $19 billion.

The book is resolutely anti-prohibition, and Mulgrew's most
compelling argument details the similarities between current cannabis
laws and alcohol prohibition in the early 1900s.

Banning something many people want guarantees high prices and lots of
profit for those willing break the law to provide it. In the cases of
both alcohol and marijuana, prohibition doesn't reflect popular
sentiment, so even law enforcement is half-hearted.

And as with the Canadian distillery families who built empires
shipping Canuck hooch south to the likes of Al Capone, the
prohibitionist environment in Canada combined with the massive
American market provides gangs with an easy, tax-free profit stream
with which to support other ventures.

In fact, at current prices a single indoor gardener with a small
basement grow show can pocket the down payment for a house every three months.

Such astounding black market profits and unprecedented demand mean
stemming the supply would require massive police resources -- and the
majority of Canadians aren't keen to spend millions jailing gardeners.

Nevertheless, Mulgrew points out that prohibition means Canadian
taxpayers bear the cost of busts, prosecution and abuse, but share
none of the profits.

He argues that if Canada legalizes and regulates marijuana sales --
as even the stodgy Senate has recommended -- lower law enforcement
costs and new tax revenue would effectively transfer billions of
dollars annually from black marketeers to the Canadian taxpayer, in
addition to freeing up law enforcement resources to target legitimate crimes.

Regulated sales would take unscrupulous dealers off the streets and
provide safe, reliable medicine to seriously ill patients.

The otherwise law-abiding toker would not bear the stigma of a
criminal record for ingesting a substance far less dangerous than
popular legal drugs like nicotine and alcohol.

And as the retail hash bars of Amsterdam have already proven, actual
usage of the drug would not increase nor would society crumble.

But Bud Inc. is more than a thoughtful contribution to the
prohibition debate; it is also an engrossing look inside the world of
Canada's pot industry. Mulgrew profiles the major players in the
battle to legalize pot and takes the reader behind the scenes and
into the offices, head shops and grow-ops of prominent seed vendors,
breeders and medicinal marijuana compassion clubs.

His exotic tales of smuggling and underworld extravagance are
fascinating, and Mulgrew's crisp first-person narrative style, along
with the eloquence of his subjects, puncture the stereotypes of the
thick stoner or ruthless drug thug.

He shows the celebrities in Canada's cannabis culture are more likely
to be thoughtful libertarian businessmen, obsessive horticultural
scientists or committed palliative caregivers than the gangs who
profit from prohibition.

The book leaves readers painfully aware that Canada's second failed
experiment with prohibition will continue, for now, to make no
distinction between opportunistic gangs, cancer patients and
Canadians unwinding at home.

But it also lets them rest assured that market forces even under
prohibition guarantee them a steady supply of primo bud -- which they
will have to roll themselves.