POT LEGALIZATION STUPID

We learned from the Canadian Addiction Survey recently that the use of
marijuana has nearly doubled in the past 10 years.

Perhaps no other single fact better explains the drift of Canadian
politics. Indeed, the report (sponsored by Health Canada and others) may
offer a one-stop shop for those trying to account for a wide variety of
political and social developments in Canada since Jean Chretien came to power.

A figure now approaching half the population freely admit to having smoked
dope, and something like one in nine also admit to the use of
hallucinogens. Ditto, cocaine. On the other hand, fewer than one in 16 of
your neighbours is on hoppers, and fewer than one in 20 has done heroin or
ecstasy. (Higher in cities.)

The part that surprised me least was that pot use "increases with education
and income" -- which is just what they say about the Liberal vote. It's
been a long time since there was any correlation between formal education
and learning, or between high income and social utility; I therefore find
no paradox to confront.

The response of the Liberal party has been to make efforts to decriminalize
the recreational use of marijuana, and who could blame them? They know
their constituency.

Whereas the NDP might be compared to the resin left at the bottom of the
pipe after the leaves have all burned away. One thinks of the card
distributed by Jack Layton supporters in the last election, which showed
the Great Helmsman's face superimposed upon a sprig of guess-what. It
declared a real enthusiasm for legalizing marijuana, and looked forward to
the day when people would be able to smoke at their ease in their homes and
"socially" in restaurants and so forth. Substitute tobacco for marijuana,
and I might be tempted to vote NDP.

Well actually, I just realized I have told a lie. The part that surprised
me the least, in the addiction survey, was not the stuff about education
and income.

The truth is, I was even less surprised to learn that British Columbia led
the other provinces in drug use. I've been to Vancouver several times in
the past decade, and was under the impression that it was not I, but the
whole city, that was on some kind of trip. Even the bankers there seem --
let's say, a little flighty.

What can it all mean?

Don't ask me, man. I stopped doing drugs when I realized they make you
crazy. It would be a serious lie to say that I never inhaled -- um,
anything. But that was in another era, and, as the saying goes, if you
remember the '60s, you weren't there.

I'm aware my colleague Dan Gardner wrote innumerable series of
award-winning articles arguing that the legalization of drugs would put an
end to all associated organized crime and make the world safe for
democracy. It's one of those issues about which, even though I am a
vocational pundit, I have never had an opinion. But wait for it, I'm about
to come up with one.

The flaw in the libertarian argument is that people don't need permission
to misbehave. That is the part of human behaviour that comes naturally.
Instead, it takes a considerable amount of repressive tradition, social
stigma, and legal threat to get anything good out of the species.

And while there may be some tactical discussion of what is worth making
illegal, and what is not, the idea that you can reduce crime by getting rid
of laws is tautological.

In this case, the question of organized crime is tertiary. We have police
to take care of that sort of thing, and if there aren't enough, then we
need more.

The secondary question is: Do we want to live in a country that is a magnet
for all the superannuated hippies in the United States? While the Americans
progressively close the border against drug shipments passing the other
way? With consequences for all the dwindling number of Canadians who do not
happen to be stoned out of their wee minds?

But even on this level, drug legalization would be merely an act of stupidity.

The primary question is, do we want the drug culture to become our public
culture? For that is the unseen goal we now approach: in a word, Holland.

Call me square, but it's yet another horror I would like to have shoved
back in its closet, and a bolt driven through the door.