LEGALIZING MARIJUANA IS NO WAY TO GET RID OF GROW-OPS

Growing Pot Will Still Be a Lucrative Activity, Especially Exporting It

There was some restraint shown after the killing of four RCMP
officers.

Usually advocates will leap within minutes on any tragedy to put
forward their reasons as to why it was the result of their pet peeve
and why it could have been prevented by the adoption of their pet solution.

This time it was a bit slower. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, for
one, resisted the temptation to score points.

"This is a tragedy," he said on Thursday. "I think the government's
marijuana bill would be ill-considered under any circumstances. I
don't want to necessarily link this to that issue.

"We can't just run out on the basis of a single tragedy and make up a
bunch of laws."

The federal public safety minister, Anne McLellan, expressed similar
sentiments: "I think it's too soon to rush to any kind of quick
judgments around what policies are appropriate, inappropriate, what
resource requirements may exist or not."

That was last week.

NOW THE EXPECTED POINTS OF VIEW HAVE EMERGED. AMONG THEM:

- - The shooting shows the need for gun control.

- - The shooting shows that the gun registry doesn't
work.

- - The shooting shows the need to crack down on marijuana
grow-ops.

- - The shooting shows the need to legalize marijuana.

- - The shooting shows that government policy is on the right
track.

So here we go. The most intriguing argument is the one using the
Alberta tragedy as a rationale for legalizing -- not decriminalizing,
but legalizing -- marijuana.

The logic is somewhat primitive: illegal grow houses disappear as soon
as you legalize marijuana. And that's true, strictly speaking. The
grow houses are still there, only now they're legal.

Problem solved.

Solved for the grow-op guys, at least. But what about for the rest of
society? Do we expect that, with marijuana safely legalized, the shady
characters with guns will disappear from the grow-ops to be replaced
by clean-living MBAs?

Why would that happen? Growing marijuana is still going to be a
lucrative activity, even more so with greater demand, and the most
lucrative part of that activity, shipping it into the United States,
is still going to be illegal, which means criminals are still going to
be involved.

It is a romantic notion that legalization would suddenly transform the
marijuana trade into a benign area of commerce. And it is an
unrealistic notion that government would decide to regulate the newly
legalized industry, creating the dope equivalent of the Liquor Control
Board of Ontario.

Meanwhile, demand goes up. With decriminalization, the current
government policy, the smoker avoids a criminal record but still has
to work a bit to find his illegal source; further, the existence of
fines is a deterrent to those who might be curious but have a
law-abiding streak. Take away the fines and the inconvenience of
locating a supply and the number of smokers increases.

It can't be a coincidence that the rapid rise in the number of
grow-ops has coincided with the beginnings of government moves to
decriminalize. If the promise of decriminalization increases demand,
what will legalization do?

Eliminating grow-ops by legalizing marijuana is like eliminating
malaria by making swamps.

It is one thing to argue against punitive laws and quite another to
argue for laws that create more use. You can say that dope smokers
shouldn't be jailed. You can say (with somewhat less certainty) that
dope smoking is harmless. But it is a stretch to say that it is good
for us and that it should be public policy to facilitate more of it.

It is not easy to make laws that can work 100 per cent effectively in
a society as complicated as ours. Things go on -- excessive drinking,
recreational use of drugs, pornography -- that many people oppose, but
we wink at them because they are too difficult to eliminate.

So we compromise. We say, in effect, "OK, but not in the car, and keep
it away from 12-year-olds."

It's easy, and even accurate, to label this hypocrisy. It's also
accurate to label it a practical way of dealing with a complex world.
Does it seem inconsistent to decriminalize marijuana and attack
grow-ops? Yup. But it also seems realistic.

And it seems very consistent to advocate, as a way of getting rid of
grow-ops, getting rid of grow-ops.