UP IN SMOKE

Three Decades After LeDain, A New Survey Confirms That
The 'War' On Marijuana Is Unwinnable

1. The use of marijuana is increasing in popularity among all age
groups of the population, and particularly among the young;

2. This increase indicates that the attempt to suppress, or even to
control, its use is failing and will continue to fail -- that people
are not deterred by the criminal law prohibition against its use.

- -- From the LeDain Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of
Drugs, Canada, 1972

What is it with the Liberals and pot? Why would a prime minister who
has admitted to ingesting his wife's illicit cannabis brownies want to
keep arresting Canadians who might choose to do the same thing, when
all evidence suggests that prohibition and increased police
enforcement criminalizes millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens
without ever reducing usage rates?

Insanity, that's why -- according to Einstein, anyway -- but more on
that later.

Despite recent moves towards alternative penalties, over the past 10
years the Liberals have overseen a massive increase in
cannabis-related seizures, arrests, and spending.

According to the RCMP, cannabis seizures have gone from 5,500 kg in
1995 to more than 21,000 kg in 2003, and from 295,000 plants to 1.4
million over the same period -- an increase of more than 400 per cent
- -- with some police departments now reporting that more than half of
their current drug cases involve cannabis cultivation.

According to a recent Statistics Canada report, the rate of cannabis
arrests has gone up 80 per cent between 1992 and 2002, to a total of
more than 70,000 a year, two-thirds of which are for minor possession.
According to the auditor-general, spending on cannabis education and
enforcement cost Canadians nearly $340 million in 2000 -- a number
that has only gone up over the past four years.

Now that Canada arrests more people per capita for cannabis crimes
than any nation in the world other than the U.S., one would hope to
see a reduction in the rates of use, but results from the Canadian
Addiction Survey released today reveal that quite the opposite is true.

Over the 10 years since the last national survey was conducted in
1994, cannabis use in Canada has risen dramatically, with 44.5 per
cent of Canadians over the age of 15 reporting that they have tried
cannabis, up from 28.7 per cent in 1994.

The biggest rise was seen in 18-24 year olds, where use rates doubled
from 35 per cent in 1994 to nearly 70 per cent today. Total reported
use over the past year also nearly doubled, rising from 7.4 per cent
to 14 per cent, meaning that more than three million Canadians used
cannabis over the past 12 months.

A few weeks ago our cigarette-smoking minister of public safety, Anne
McLellan, displayed her usual tact and grace by calling Canadian
cannabis users "pretty stupid."

On behalf of the 44 per cent of Canadians who have tried cannabis --
including the likes of literary icon Pierre Berton and our
aforementioned PM -- I demand an apology. This assumption is not only
offensive but, according to the new CAS survey, it's just plain wrong.

One of the study's most interesting revelations is that the rate of
lifetime cannabis use increases significantly in conjunction with both
higher education and income -- rising from 34.9 per cent among those
without a high school degree, to over 52 per cent among Canadians with
some post-secondary education and from 42.9 per cent of those with low
income, to 54 per cent of those reporting a high income.

In other words, Minister McLellan, the smarter and more successful you
are, the more likely you are to use cannabis; or is it vice-versa?

The results of the CAS survey will inevitably provoke cries from
prohibitionists to further increase both enforcement spending and the
penalties around cannabis use and production.

Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over
again and expecting different results, yet this all too accurately
describes the madness of our federal cannabis policy over the 30 years
since the report of the LeDain Commission.

Perhaps it would serve to remind both Paul Martin and Anne McLellan
that the 42 per cent of Canadians over 15 who have tried cannabis --
and who remain potential targets for either high fines or imprisonment
under Bill C-17 -- are considerably more numerous than the 36.7 per
cent of voters who voted for the Liberals in the last election.

As the data from the CAS survey suggest, it's time that we stopped
waging this unwinnable, unpopular war on cannabis, and put an end to
the potential criminalization of the nearly 15 million Canadians who
have tried it.

Legalizing and taxing the adult use of cannabis may finally allow our
nation to focus our resources on the many real problems we face, chief
among them being the unending flow of inane comments from McLellan. As
the wise man once said, "stupid is as stupid does," and you can put
that in your pipe and smoke it.