TO GET RID OF GROW-OPS, TRY THINKING LIKE GROWN-UPS

There was some restraint shown after the Alberta shootings. Usually
advocates will leap within minutes on any tragedy to put forward their
reasons as to why the tragedy was the result of their pet target 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."

Harper added: "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 almost tautological: 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.

At least, problem solved for the grow-op guys. 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 it is too difficult to eliminate them. We would have
to become a police state to do so.

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

Actually, that same thinking could apply to cellphones.

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.